> You are right to be worried about it if your applications have not been built with a recent version of IB Objects or if multiple users have interactive access to your database through any tool that connects using any means other than those recent IBO components.

So, why is it that IBO was able to fix it, but it seems so difficult to fix in IB?

Here's what I don't understand: Why doesn't IB simply open the physical file in exclusive mode? Wouldn't that prevent it from re-opening the file a second time, regardless of the connection path? Perhaps I'm not understanding something about Windows.

> You should check the BDE alias setup on every client installation and in every part of your application. If your BDE application lets users enter the path in the login dialog, then fix it so that they can only use an alias to connect.

Since my application is installed by the users, I can't personally check every user's system. They do not use paths directly in my software. They all use BDE aliases. But, each client could have the BDE alias specified slightly different. Does that still present a problem?

What about if some users specify the server by host name, and others by IP address, but the rest of the physical path is the same?

Say, one client specifies it:

myserver:C:\myprog\data\mydata.gdb

and another one says:

192.168.0.2:C:\myprog\data\mydata.gdb

And the client running on the server machine simply has

C:\myprog\data\mydata.gdb

Would those be considered 3 different connection strings and cause problems? I'm sure that I have users doing exactly that, and I haven't seen any problems.

-Joe