>>Deadly embrace? This is when two processes are waiting for one another two finish before continuing- how could you do this with VFP?
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>>SET REPROCESS TO AUTOMATIC has always done it for me- I have never had a problem. I use both INSERT INTO and APPEND BLANK depending on the situation, and have not been bitten with either one.
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>I think the kind of scenario he's thinking of here is two users running the same application. User 1 locks record X, User 2 locks record Y, then User 1 tries to lock record Y while User 2 tries to lock record X creating a circular locking dilemma. I don't know if this is his exact situation since he seems to be dealing with INSERTs, but I assume this is what he is referring.
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>BTW, I know you are familiar with this situation, but responded for those who may not have heard of a "deadly embrace."

Deadly embrace extends beyond that - it's any cyclic relaionhip where the involved members hold resources required by other members to complte their operations, and where once resource is acquired, it is not released until the operation completes; there are a number of solutions to deadly embrace - the easiest is to ensure that all processes acquire locks on resources in the sme order - IOW, if two processes require resources A and B, deadly embrace can never occur between Process1 and Proces 2 which each require (A,B) if both processes attempt to acquire A before attempting to acquire B. Enforcement of a strict order of acquisition ensures that deadly embrace never occurs; systems are not permitted to acquire resource C unless they already hold an preceding resources like A or B or have no need to acquire them.