Hi Sergey,

>If this lock isn't required anyway, why not eliminate it altogether and lock record before deletion only?

1. Who said the lock isn't required?
2. Previous versions of VFP worked this way and no one complained.
3. Record locking refreshes the record from disk. Is it better to look for a JOIN match first given that the record's content may be different after it is locked? If record's content is changed, it may invalidate result of the JOIN operation. Moreover, the record may no longer satisfy the filter condition - the JOIN was done for nothing.

Thanks,
Aleksey.