Hugh,

>It seems to work ok.

this is probably only true as long as PTDEMOG is a small table not used in
a multiuser environment - your trigger is still updating all rows in that
table every time it is executed. Imagine the consequences in a multiuser
environment - you risk everybody wanting to update one row in whatever
table that trigger refers to having to wait until your current user have
committed his/her changes. Assuming your trigger is for the SpecNo table,
what you probably want is as simple as

ALTER TRIGGER SPECIMENNO_INSERT
AFTER INSERT
POSITION 0
AS

BEGIN

UPDATE PTDEMOG
SET SPECIMENID = NEW.specimen_no
WHERE PATHNO = NEW.PATHNO;

END

HTH,
Set