>Yes. But creating COM DLL or COM activeX in VB, you still have the luxury to use DE.

Yes, but why? I am certainly not going to use the DE for any type of data binding. With the DE how do you manage your connections? How do you implement connection pooling, etc., in MTS or COM+? How much work is it if you need to switch a large app to another database (is it a matter of a couple of lines of code or a couple of lines in an INI file)? How do you scale easily from the desktop to the enterprise or to the internet?

The DE is fine for some app. But if you need to answer any of the above questions the DE cannot be used.