Hi Marc, Long time no see :-)

We needed to know who was using a particular record (or in some cases a subset of records), so we designed a semaphore table. We call a 'GetSemaphore()' function to see if someone is using that record, and a 'PutSemaphore()' which stores the machine name, the user name (from our oUser object) and the record (or area) being 'locked'. We clear all semaphores when a user/machine combo logs on (in case their last exit was abnormal) and when they log off It's been working fine for 3 months now, and users are really pleased to know that "Diane on Shipping 1" has locked something - they know who AND what computer to check.

Of course, we DO have a problem - one of the worst offenders about leaving their system running is Customer Service - and they run over PCAnywhere on a computer in the locked server room. When THEY are the culprits, everyone runs around searching for a supervisor with the key :-)

Barbara

>Hi,
>
>I wonder if there is such a thing that could store the station and the log in name, and since we are at it, the timestamp, of locked records.
>
>I'm thinking of a kind of a meta table that would contain the name of the table that receives the lock, the primary key and then the locking information. Locking would proceed through a generic tablebase.lock() method that would maintain the meta table and/or return the locking information.
>
>The only problem I see is the length of the key of metatable.
>
>Anybody done (seen) something like that or does not think it could work, or has a better idea, for clients who's computers are scattered over different rooms on different floors?
>
>TIA,
>
>Marc