Bhavbhuti,

It is a programming problem, you're on the right track to solve it.

I'm sure you know this, but let me review briefly some things. When a record is deleted it is not really deleted, it is only marked for deletion, it is not deleted until the PACK command does that in maintenance operation. So, these records that you're feeding into the central computer may not be deleted. If you issue 'SET DELETED OFF', then you can see the 'deleted' records. You can even work with them in your programming. You can RECALL them to undelete them. So, if your users can refrain from doing the maintenance procedure that issues the PACK command until after they export info on the floppy to the main computer, then you've got those records all along, just need to analyze them in code. This might be least expensive means for you.

Another alternative might be to modify on those various source machines that feed data to the big main computer so that every time a user deletes a record that it is first copied into a 2'nd and identical table that simply lists the records deleted. This would be a better solution because it wouldn't risk that the users would get rid of the record by doing that maintenance procedure that has the PACK in it.

Hope this helps.

Wally Noll