> What happens to the dummy lock , if the person who
> locked the table abnormally closes the application or somehow his
> transaction fails. Will I have to write some maintenance routines ?

The same thing that happens to all uncommitted updates, the server
will generally manage to automatically rollback when it detections the
disconnection.

As for server maintenance/checks I suggest you read the "Operations
Guide", part of the IB6 beta documentation available from one of the
links I posted previously.

> In earlier rows of mesages I found your answer to Marco about using
> Flag Field for locking purposes. I was using that system very often
> in dos programs written with clipper.
> But this time I want to use capabilities of C/S architecture.

Pessimistic locking is not generally seen as "C/S architecture". Not
that I am certain I agree with the philosophy. The flag field
arrangement is just a way to force pessimistic locking capability past
a system not designed to support it.

--
Geoff Worboys
Telesis Computing