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I have 2 new clients, one who wants to use Oracle, one who wants to use Cache. Neither want anything to do with SQL Server.

In the context of "easier handling of multiple backends", can you develop you argument for those two cases?
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Hey John. AFAIK, there's no native OLEDB provider for Cache, so no. In my original point, I only meant to point out that depending on the circumstances, there could be other ways to proceed -- but as I said, good point, you're right, it's quite handy that you can switch backends so easily with remote views.

But, to develop the argument a little.... the only ADO-based system I have worked on that was switching b/w different databases utilized wtwo SQL Server databases (don't ask -- ugly reporting system against a bad design that was out of my hands). In that case, I added stored procedures with the same name to each database and switched out the connection string as necessary. (Conceivably, I could have done the same with other types of backends that support the functionality.) I don't think the handling of multiple backends would have been easier with Remote Views in that case. In fact, probably just the difference between the following constructs somewhere in a startup routine:

Strategy A:
DO CASE
CASE nBackEnd = 1
Open Database ONE
CASE nBackEnd = 2
Open Database TWO
CASE nBackEnd = 3
Open Database THREE
ENDCASE

Strategy B:
DO CASE
CASE nBackEnd = 1
ADORecordset.ConnectionString = GetString("One")
CASE nBackEnd = 3
ADORecordset.ConnectionString = GetString("Two")
CASE nBackEnd = 3
ADORecordset.ConnectionString = GetString("Three")
ENDCASE
&&& where GetString returns a sql server OLE DB string with
&&& the database name added into it....

Okay, maybe that's a lousy example... ;-)