Mike,

Thanks for the info. I knew it wasn't that simple. :-)

John


>This behavior is goverened by the TRANSACTION ISOLATION level. The way only way to get the behavior that you're looking for is to change the TRANSACTION ISOLATION to REPEATABLE READ or SERIALIZABLE (this will cause SQL Server to maintain locks until the end of the transaction) and enclose all the read queries (SELECT) and modification queries (INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE) within a user transaction.