Don --

That's one of the fundamental questions of multi-user data access. Your native instincts are right on.

This article in the articles section by John Koziol can perhaps put those questions in perspective and provide database terminology and VFP capabilities so that you can formulate your own strategy:

http://www.levelextreme.com/wconnect/wc.dll?FournierTransformation~2,25,442

Searching UT on key terms in that article will give more specific implementations.

Enjoy!

Jay

>As someone new to SQL some aspects of the concept seem troubling to me. For example, it appears that data is pulled from the database in small portions and then through the use of some form. During this process, all sorts of transactions may be occuring with the database which are unknown to that processing on the local data.
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>If that processing is reporting, fine, no problem. However, what if someone brings in some data to edit and before they have a chance to put it back, someone deletes the record they pulled in to edit ? There appears to be no way (at least no inherent) to mark that data so that no-one will be able to delete it while it is out being edited.
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>Oh, I suppose you could put a field in every file called BEING_EDITED and set this flag before bringing the data to your local site. Of course, this leaves the system open for problems if the user that set the flag never gets back to the database on the server.
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>Is this how you do it or do you just throw the edited record away (not likely) if it no longer exists when they try to write it back to the data.
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>Any thoughts on these types of things ?