YES! AC really needs to be re-architectured from the ground up in an n-tiered paradigm. It wouldn't be an easy task but the future benefits and maintainence out weighs the pain of re-design and refactoring. Current advances in .Net 2.0 and 3.0 are significant and future LINQ to Entities may even address the issues with database lock-in.
Vinny,
It would be best to re-architect the entire thing FROM THE GROUND UP! I am not a believer in dragging along COM based systems in to the .NET world.
The number of programming tools/components available for .NET far exceed anything that was available for VB6. Anything. The reason is simple. A .NET component can be written in ANY .Net language and used in .Net application in any language. So a C# component can be used in a VB.Net application and vice versa.
