hey dmitry,

thanx for the advice, i kept digging deeper and i found it in a trigger under the ROPART, but it wasn't the AFTER UPDATE.  it was in the BEFORE UPDATE where i had a OLD.something assigned and did that because i used it later in a comparison and i wanted the trigger updated value and not the original OLD that came into the trigger with.  so i added a local declaration and used that instead and everything is fixed.

very intense.  thanx again and talk to you soon.  lucas

Did you search one step deeper, inside AFTER triggers for ROMECH and ROPART?

> so i don't get why firebird is throwing back this error nor do i
> understand how to address it.

You need to find an AFTER (supposedly AFTER UPDATE) trigger that assigns
something into the NEW context.

Dmitry