Hi Jim ----

I happen to like pessimistic row buffering but, I agree with you, it's too restrictive. OTOH, sometimes it depends on the sophistication of the user. With a pessimistic buffer, VFP flat out blocks (controlled train wreck I call it) two edits at the same time. With Opt. buffering, you can use CURVAL(), OLD VAL() and whatnot to decide what to save with a conflict. Then again, usually you end up dialogs like "Address was changed by another....Overwrite or discard your changes?" ... at which point the unsophisticated user goes screaming for momma :-D

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>In my book I show a form class that recovers from all conflicts expect a field level one without user intervention. It use Optimistic Table buffering.
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>Everyone wants to simplify things, but in this area simple is inaccurate. I can use Optimistic buffering and prevent two users from working on the same record at the same time. However, I canot use pessimistic buffering and allow two user to edit the same record simultaneously. So ti seems to me that optimistic lets me do whatever I want whenever I want to but pessimistic limits what I can do.