>1. is compelling enough to convince me. I suppose there are other things that can also go wrong here when records don't get locked, not necessarily because of RI.
>
>2. Putting genkey in the stored procedures anyway is probably a good idea even if I'm not making keys with it. I might get around to that.

Probably a good idea in this case, since your app is pretty dependent on good data.

>I was also wondering: if I want to prevent users from making duplicates, as defined by the contents of what is now the keyfield, I could make a candidate index for it. Would that be a useful barrier to duplication, or a potential source of glitches and trouble?

Bret, I steer clear of Candidate indexes, because you have to be just as careful with updating them as with a Primary index - the possiblility of problems is at least geometrically increased. Use a regular index and do a lookup when you re-calculate your Genkey field.

Barbara