Hi doug,

>>When a client is dead and does not start up anymore, the application still thinks it is active.

>There's a simple solution to that: rather than updating a record in a table when the user logs in (which has the problem when the user crashes), lock a record in a semaphore table. If the user crashes, the lock is released. So, to count the number of concurrent users, you scan through the semaphore table and try to lock each record, counting how many you failed on (because another user has the record locked). I use this mechanism for an application licensed by the user and it works just fine.

I've been using this technique for FP/VFP applications for about 8 years now, but I was talking about a SQL server logon table in which you cannot use manual locks.

Walter,