>>Well Robert,
>>
>>Since you're interested :), imagine a diamond company ... with sites in Antwerp, Tel Aviv and New York. The account related table is not difficult to manage (I think) but what keeps me awake at night are the internal inventory operations like sorting and mixing goods, where part of the information is on the site (the actual weights for example), but sometimes estimation prices are established somewhere else at a different time ... and in the meanwhile the goods may have to be shipped to a third site that may already have partially sold it.
>>
>>I understand that this is more a challenge for the organisation than for software development, but you understand that all the help I can get is welcome _before_ I start to spec the problem out.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>Marc
>
>Sounds to me like you'd do better to look at extending the record-locking model rather than relying on synchronisation (you'll probably need moderately fast links though) - the book reference I gave you has a number of models for this (like majority-locking and primary copy).
>
>If you use this I think you'll need to look at something other than VFP [sharp intake of breath] unless you want to hand-craft it yourself or the number of users/conflicts is very small: not that it couldn't be done but you might be re-inventing the wheel.

Hmm. Courageous post. :)

I thought that to the contrary, as in this case the conflicts are likely to be multiple and will require manual interventioin, I thought that a more robust DBMS would not really make the difference.

I'll order the book. :)

Thanks for caring.

Marc