Wirt Atmar <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> Personally, I wouldn't write either task using the methods described
above.
> In the interest of absolute safety above all else, I would first perform a
> serial scan of the manual master and write every key value's entry off
into a
> flat file.
>
> After that was completed, I would then loop back to the beginning of the
flat
> file and attempt a DBDELETE on each of the values in the file, one by one.
> Doing this is the truly "safe" procedure. Masters are better addressed
from
> the outside world by their values than by the current addresses those
values
> occupy. By doing this, you're letting IMAGE do all of the work of managing
> the secondaries -- and that is code that is truly safe and well-tested.

And then later,

> But even that wildly, extremely unlikely condition (requiring bad
programming
> technique in the first process' programmer) could be avoided by the truly
> paranoid delusional tack of locking the entire database for your scan &
> delete procedure.
>
> However, I'm not that much of a paranoid delusional :-).

When it comes to my data bases, I *am* that much of a paranoid delusional,
and in this case I would lock either the data set or the entire database for
the entire process, no matter which method is used.


Jim Phillips                            Manager of Information Systems
E-Mail: [log in to unmask]     Therm-O-Link, Inc.
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