Lynda,

The DBAs can put the database in single user mode, but that will require their interaction, I'm not sure if it an be done programatically or not. We do this periodically when we are making a big change to the structure etc.

I believe there is a way to lock tables, but I don't know the command off the top of my head.

You can execute a SP_WHO and see who is logged in, if the endofmonth user login has enough rights then it can execute kill commands to end the other user sessions, but that's not very nice. You can use a stayout flag in some table that the user app needs to peridocially polls and does a more graceful shutdown.

The the user's app will error when they try to update a record that is no longer in the table since it's been moved.

>David, I'd like to ask one more question on this topic please. Is there a way to insure the equivalent of exclusive use for the SQL database while the close runs? The inserts wouldn't be a problem but the deletes could fail in that situation. It just seems like we don't want anyone updating at the same time...