>The trouble is that since the data is buffered, changing those fields has no effect on the actual table. So the other users won't see that it's locked. To get around this, I change the lock fields before any editing happens, force a table update, and then allow editing. It just seemed overly complicated to me and I was wondering if there was a better way.
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Ah, I didn't realize you were buffering your locking table. You shouldn't do that, just like you shouldn't buffer your NextId table, or whatever you call the table that you use to assign PKs. You want users to see any changes to those kinds of tables immediately.