Nigel,

>The table in question is being hit quite hard and some extremely slow responses have been measured. One operation is selecting data from the table, others are inserting into the table. Those that are inserting are *hanging* and task manager shows *not responding*. I've explained to the user that the process is too busy to respond to task manager.

A solution might be to make a offline-copy of the table and use this table to make reports etc.

If not possible try to convince yourself of the folowing:

- The app does not apply File locking in any code. for e.G:
DO not use: REPLACE field WITh valueexpression FOR somecondition
But use:
SCAN FOR somecondition
REPLACE Field WITH ValueExpression
ENDSCAN

- The app doesn't use pessimistic buffering.
- The app will prohibit deadlocks (By using a SET REPROCESS TO n SECONDS and handling errors)
- The right indexes are used on the table: Not too much indexes, not too less.
- You don't use a tag on deleted() (unless the table contains millions of deleted records) Indexes themself take up time to in optimization and in modifying data. Asure yourself that the indexes on the table are needed.

Some other considerations, thoughts and comments:
- Is the network trafic too high ?
- Which network (Novell, NT ?, others ?)
- 10 MB, 100MB network, network achitecture ?

Good luck,

Walter,