You could hand out a DataView with AllowEdit & AllowAdd set to false - I think this will give you the behavior you are after mark
-----Original Message----- From: Ian Griffiths [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Tuesday, June 11, 2002 2:42 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [DOTNET] Read only behaviour for a DataTable The point being that the DataSet is *always* disconnected. An ADO recordset is, by default, attached to the database, so the notion of read-only was rather more important. With a DataSet any changes that happen to be made will not actually have any long term effect unless something explicitly pushes those updates back to the database. -- Ian Griffiths DevelopMentor ----- Original Message ----- From: "franklin gray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Don't think there is anyway to prohit another programmer from changing the data in a datatable. -----Original Message----- From: Greg Gates [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] In "classic" ADO, the ADO recordset had a clone method to which you could pass a lock type. One of the lock types was adLockReadOnly. Thus it was possible to return a reference to an existing ADO recordset and have read only behaviour. What is the best way to allow a client to obtain a reference to an existing ADO.NET data table and also have read only behaviour?. You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com. You can read messages from the DOTNET archive, unsubscribe from DOTNET, or subscribe to other DevelopMentor lists at http://discuss.develop.com.