> Some advice please on handling transactions that stay open for
> prolonged periods (hours -> days).
>
> I have a number of users who tend to leave an application open on the
> desktop with one/more open queries displaying data in a dbgrid. These
> appear to be holding the Oldest Active Transaction. My understanding
> is that this in turn inhibits garbage collection and thus
> progressively slows the performance.

For grids, use Read Only Read Committed transactions,
they do not block garbage collection.
For other situations create timer that will
- after some time notify the user that he should eventually finish/close the form
- after some longer time sends email to chief notifying him that user
is probably just pretending the work
- after even longer time it just kills(closes) the form/application

Ivan