>using virtualization, yupp. Still multi-user file ISAM access might be made too errorprone by OS default settings like SMB2 or oplocking. I visualize table access more like office documents in the future: exclusive might make table usage "compatible" with the surrounding systems again.

SMB2 bug looks like one of those "wasn't broken, but they fixed it anyway" - SMB1 worked fine. But then, many times I saw network gurus come fix the network by showing that it saves a Word file... while the symptoms weren't "can't copy a few hundred kilobytes over the network" but "network files don't stay open - they close at random" (the dreaded 1106 or some such error). Which means that even then (1997-2003 or thereabouts) the ability of networks to keep a file open and maintain locks was a stepchild in M$ - these guys learned their diagnostic techniques from someones books and course material.

This hurt two of M$'s products too - Fox and Access. And guess what, Access was pushed to use SQL (or be used on single machine), and Fox was pushed out. Sell more SQL server licenses... there you go. And any competitors' products that use file access are doomed to incur more and more errors and file crashes. This error was introduced in 2007, with the Vista, and it's almost four years now, and the fix isn't there yet. My bet is that it won't be fixed at all, M$ will wait until everyone relevant moves to SQL.