I don't know if is typical for everybody but I worked for a couple of clients and they were doing it that way. Also, at the time I did not know much about MS SQL either (not that I know a lot now) and these ideas people give you here, like "GUID" I had no idea existed.
AFAIK Transactions locks the whole table.

>Is using a combination of local and sql tables a typical method of doing things? I had thought of that, but guessed a true sql program only used sql tables. Do transactions lock the whole table or just the record being added/worked on?
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>- Gary