>As far as building a fat client app that accesss data over the wire, I do that today. And no, it is not a web service.

Over the internet? TCP/IP? HTTP? If you're depending on ADO to make your connection for you, I hate to tell you this, but you're going through ports that an admin punched for you (for SQL Server, probably 1433 and 1434).

> I reject the notion that good stuff is not being done today.

I don't remember anyone saying that.

>ADO/OLE-DB works just fine for these types of apps. The key is in how you leverage the tiers. I am not down on rendering data as XML mind you. It just so happens that clients invoking middle-tier objects that invoke stored procedures that ultimately render ADO Recordsets works very well.

They work, yes, but they have weaknesses that I have already outlined.