>>If you follow this architecture (which is the way most modern development is going) the guts of your application is in your business layer(s). The UI never touches the data directly. (So DE and Forms are a none issue for any serious development project. I no longer touch the DE.)
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>VB DE still uses ODBC/OLE DB. You are using cursors here and therefore, it is not directly connected to DB. Unlike VFP, using its traditional DML, it's purely single tier. Now, exclude middle-tier, and VB is purely 2-tier development regardless of the database. It might be subjective, but combine VB/ACCESS DB or VB/VFPDBC, it is a two-tier architecture because of SPs/Triggers. That scenario, the methodology is 2-tier because you have 2 layers.

In either case your UI still accesses the database directly, even via ODBC/OLE DB. My point is that in the Windows DNA (.NET) architecture (and most modern development) the UI cannot and does not talk with the database. It negotiates with the interface of the business objects and the business objects communicate with the data. In fact the UI does not even know the location of the database or the engine being used.