Hi Paul.

Sorry for the delay in my reply -- I was at the MVP Summit last week and have been swamped this week.

>So how does this work in a multiuser environment. I have a loader program that copies the exe down to the client but I really want the same program to update my data structures so that my exe & data don't drop out of sync. The trouble is that'll only work if everyone's out of the data......

Correct. What I typically do is have a forced exit procedure for the application. I have an application-level timer that checks for the presence of a file (eg. "SHUTDOWN.TXT"). If that file exists, the user is informed the app is shutting down for maintenance and they should exit. Another timer is started that does a QUIT 2 minutes later. At app startup, if that file exists, the user is told they have to stay out for a while and it then quits.

So, to do a data update, I create SHUTDOWN.TXT and wait a few minutes. I can then do whatever is necessary to update the structures, then delete that file and tell everyone they can get back in again.

Doug