<snip>

> Test it yourself, I do not have time right now to make sure my blocks
> line up. The basic idea is that it should return to you the first
> authorid that no-one else is working on or has worked on. A rollback
> will also "unflag it". You could add an "order by" to the select if
> you had a particular order you wanted to process them in.
>
> Adam

Thank you very much Adam; that was more than enough to work with. How
to integrate handling a rollback into the process was definitely a
concern so your method looks like it covers all the bases. Helen's
book is going to develop a few more dog ears this week.
- Steve