[looknow12]

I was thinking more of a stored procedure that was written by VB. If none exists, then I would drop that as an option.

When I say business objects I'm referring to DLL's specifically written to carry out many of these functions. Call the method on the DLL for adding a new user, pass the parameters and then get a result code/message.

Our application uses these DLL's to carry out many of the common functions. Typically when people refer to a three tier architecture they mean database layer, application or business object layer(dll's) and client (UI). The nice thing about this middle application tier is that you can later create a different client (web, rich windows, mobile) and still use the same objects so as you said the database is always treated the same for common functions.