If I recall correctly, SQL is finickey about the clause. I think that you can issue it without the "WITH" on a single table (SELECT * FROM mytable NOLOCK), but with multiple tables, such as a join, you need the "WITH (NOLOCK)"...but if you leave off the paren's around NOLOCK it doesn't do anything AND does NOT tell you it's ignoring it!

>I'd like to thank all of you who replied to my question.
>
>Funny things seem to frequently happen to me around software < gremlins ? >. Anyway, I'd like to share with you all that I re-wrote the particular query that was giving me trouble and once more included "WITH (NOLOCK)" as I had done previously but then without success. This time it worked like a charm!!!??? I cannot explain why my previous attempts with this one had failed but maybe I had somehow created a syntaxt error without realising it. So, thanks to your good advice, the retry has worked perfectly. Oh! and in this case, dirty-reads is no problem whereas locking the database has irate people queuing at my door <g> Thnx. /psb