Ken,

>>So, I don't think RVs are a moot point in the least. Move them to the middle-layer and they go from being moot to being invaluable.
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>middle tier? - ADO (with OLE-DB) or XML (with BE that supports it)

Absolutely. Whatever floats your boat sounds good to me, which includes RVs. I'm not so much for RVs as I am for the middle-tier concept. If you depend solely on SPs for your backend, the middle-tier would be at the very least redundant, and at the very worst, ignored.

JoeK