>I'm starting a new project and I'm trying to decide where to put complex method code (business rules?) as a standard for myself.
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>Can somebody help me with some best practices - pro's and con's of what I should do, and the problems I will run into down the line if I do it any particular way?
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>My concerns include embedded methods or external prg's, pathing of project components ( common (big )libraries or small local copies ) and benefits of loading a COM server once versus loading ( opening files ? ) once per transaction ( not for performance, but from a design point of view )

Hello, Mike.

If you don't have any prior scheme constructed by yourself, I think many of us can give you different approaches, but overall it will depend a lot of the type and complexity of the project.

I think that maybe you can take a look at some available frameworks and maybe pick one of them or at least see how they organize components and see for yourself what best fits your needs. I don't use any as I have my own, but you can do a little research on Mere Mortals, Codebook, Maxframe, ProMatrix, and others.

You can find their websites trough the links sections, and you can also get advise from many people here using them (James Weil can comment you about Mere Mortals for sure).

Actually, I think that if you can start basically from zero, using a framework would speed you up a lot.

Good luck!