Hi Kevin,

best way is to have a Data Acccess Object that is instantiated from the middle tier. This brings you back Data as a cursor. (e.g. as a view)

If you then more e.g. o sql server you just have to change the data access object. (e.g. instantiate one that loads data over a remote view).

In my opinion there is no way around taking a seperate data access object.
What you get from it can differ.
You can also think of the data access object delivering XML Data wich is always converted in the middle tier......

But the key to it is a differnt object.

Marcus

>For example, if I have a business object called Customer (based on table Customer), how would Customer obtain customer records from the data-layer? Would it be via a data-object that sits in the middle-tier, would it execute the query directly from the data-layer? or is there another way?