David,

There are several ways of remote data access for applications. The ultimate decision is based on who is going to use your app and what security they have.

For the ultimate public access, stick with ASP and simple HTML data forms. Otherwise your application will not be accessible to the public.

Assuming that your application will be used in a controlled manner: (Employees accessing data from remote, Customers signing up for your application, etc)

Here are a few ways to do remote data
1) Use SQL server for the data. Access the data using standard VFP remote views via ODBC. Use the front end web page to download the necessary components.
2) Use ADO (ADO is still in 'beta' - AKA MS release 1)
3) Use LMHOSTS to map a drive to a NT Server across TCP/IP

As far as a web page. There is a MS KB article with sample code that uses the IE OBJECT tag to detect, download and install the VFP runtime. I tried pasting it into this article but the UT pulled a groin muscle when it hit the HTML code im my reply.

HTH,
Ed