>>Martin, no it's not generalities ;-) and thanks to this great discussion I've altered my approach: if I were to move to NET today, I'd create data processes with change tracking plus an inbuilt pessimistic system that may be quiescent most of the time, or may be invoked most of the time, depending what the customer decides now or later. I'm now very happy about this, whereas I certainly wasn't before. Thanks for the assistance!
>
>You forgot to include "Autospanning". :p

Ouch! :)