>>Hi Doug,
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>>Perhaps, but there's one thing here, that may not get enough attention. How much of a role it plays, I can't say. Perhaps someone a little better versed than I (like Ed Rauh) might know. What I'm talking about is the underlying character based ROM BIOS. These machines were never initially designed to do what they're doing now. If they had been built from day one (like the Mac) to handle the GUI interface, how much different (and probably more reliable) product would we have?
>
>I really like the way you think outside of the box. Personally I'd rather _not_ have a GUI interface on my server -directly- and have to worry about it becoming just another node on a network and causing all kinds of havoc. I want PREFORMANCE. Let me remotely administer the Server with a GUI and a simple Novell-like interface when on the server. Makes no sense but who am I to say? *g* If we can keep the GUI and keep performance and reliability up, fine with me.

Well, we can hope.< g > Seriously, I'd really like to hear what Ed R. has to say about this. He's the guy that can give better insights to the ramifications of something like this.

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>>N-Tier makes a lot of sense, just as dynamic linking did previously. On reflection, it occurred to me that it falls nicely in line with the top-down design paradigm. I think it was just that we never considered separating the UI before. I believe that it will help us in creating more stable apps by foricing us to pay greater attention to the overall design and purpose. Just a thought, though.
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>Sure, the wnole notion of n-tier reinforces better design methods. It _does_ bring up issues like DLL management and so forth but if we didn't have constant challenges we couldn't keep commanding the big bucks. *G*
>
In some ways, component design utilizing dynamic linking makes things much easier to deal with. Back in FPW all my applications were APP files that were started by a single EXE. The EXE contained all the system level services (opening tables, printing reports, handling the command bar, handling searches, etc.) required by the apps. The apps accessed the services by utilizing dynamic linking. These (the services) were included in the Project Manager for the apps, but marked as excluded. If a change was required in one of these services, all I had to do was re-compile the main EXE and turn over one file to impact all the applications.

N-Tier offers a whole new realm of possibilities in this area, since it can potentially allow us to interact with other applications, which may or may not be based on the VFP development platform.