>>In order to do an occassional PACK of the DBC/DBFs, I wondered if there was a convenient way to log-off all users so I can get EXCLUSIVE use in the early morning hours.
>>
>>I wondered what would happen if the READ EVENTS command was in a
>>DO...WHILE loop that monitored the system clock
>>
>>i.e. At 1:00am, the program would run a shutdown routine.
>>
>>Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated.
>
>The way I (and my LAN, usually, too, for their tasks) handle this is:
>
>Send out email once or even twice stating the date/time of downtime. Get on your Server Manager (or equivalent) at downtime and see that all is free, if not, individually deal with the users. There usually aren't many, especially after the first time or two...Then open the DBCs/tables EXCL right away, so no one else can get in anyway. Do your thing, and if necessary send out more email stating you're finished.
>

This is great as long as a human resource is available to intervene when it's time to shut down. Scheduled maintenance after hours often doesn't have the luxury of this assumption. Even scheduled downtime during normal business hours seems to get screwed up at times...

Having a LAN Administrator available to go whack users with a cudgel when they don't do what you want is a luxury that often isn't available. It also relies on the user being around to be whacked; I've been bitten more than once by having several data entry operators all go out for an extended lunch (left at 11, came back at 3, and I needed to do something at 12:30...) or where someone is working from another site.

If I have to, with a single (at times annoyingly large) site, I can find out who has the stuff open and go over to the machines and exit the app(s) (only to be greeted by howls of dismay when the operators got back.) Even with easy physical access, with password-protected screen savers running, there may be no easy way to safely get them out...if multiple sites are involved (lets say offices in Trumbull, NYC, and Osaka) it may not be feasible to go visit each machine.

Remote users who sometimes forget to shut down make this even worse (and as the normal culprit in these cases, I don't particularly like being beaten about the head and shoulders...) If there's only one phone line at the site, and they've disabled network messaging services (I routinely disable my station's receipt of broadcast messages from NetWare when I know that some random disk volume that I don't care about is going to run out of free space soon...) there's no civilized way to get to these users.

As long as you have assurances that users (1) will cooperate, (2) can be reached in a timely fashion, and (3) aren't going to be in a uninterruptible state in the app when you need them to shut down, the email request followed by visits by a LAN Admin carrying an electric cattle prod is the best approach. If you don't have these assurances, there's a strong chance that if you don't defer until cooperation is secured, the forcible discconect of the app from the data will screw up the tables.

Even with gentle shutdown, data entry is sensitive to being interrupted, and it's important to let the operator know that either a transaction in process was committed as far as it had been entered (not my preference) or backed out entirely and to always be consistent in this treatment of data in flux. It's important to let the data entry operator know not to throw away the first 5 pages of an order if they walk away for a quick (read 3-4 hour) lunch break in the middle of entering a PO that arrived in the mail.

We have a simple manual system for saving source documents - an out box on each data entry operator's desk where all source documents go until the data is known to have been backed up successfully to tape (the outbox doesn't get emptied until someone has looked at the log from the previous night's backup to make sure everything was backed up succesfully, and if it wasn't, the source documents can't be thrown pout or packed away.) It works!

>The easiest way is to have a regular weekly/monthly, etc. time scheduled for this, users get accustomed to it and things go smoothly...LAN does it on weekends usually, I just do my maintenance early in the morning...