What I didn't mention in the previous message is that we use that process for order numbers, bill of lading numbers, and inventory ticket numbers in five multi-user environments, and have been doing so for over 10 years with tens of thousands of such transactions per month with no duplications or missing numbers. It takes no discernible time unless another user has "locked" the table. There have been perhaps two occurrences over those 10 years where someone has gotten a lock on the table and lost their connection to the database, probably from a power outage. In that event we just manually reset the flag and all is well.
> Would you have to limit access to the table to a > single user at a time, at > least in a multi-user environment? This would be to > assure that no 2 users > hitting the table simultaneously get the same > number, if that's possible, as > well as other potential problems related to many > users accessing the table.
There's no guarantee that this would be true, and I have to allow for simultaneous entries on different machines more or less at the same time.
I believe the NEXT() function should handle conflicts, taking out the necessary short term lock on the AUTONUM column in my dummy table. -- Larry
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Emmitt Dove Manager, DairyPak Business Systems Blue Ridge Paper Products, Inc. 40 Lindeman Drive Trumbull, CT 06611 (203) 673-2231 [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
