Doug,
>Here's my $0.02 on this point. If you're doing n-tier, you have to forget about cursors. Since you can't pass a cursor to anything outside the current VFP session, you end up having to constantly package and unpackage cursors to pass them between the layers. So, while ODBC works fine in a two-tier environment, it won't in an n-tier one.
Here's my $0.02 -- listen up, everyone. Read Doug's excellent article on nTier design in the new issue of Code Magazine (on its way to subscribers right now). Very well done.