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From: glenn@welch.jhu.edu (Glenn M. Mason)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: File locking with DbaseIII/IV
Message-ID: <1991Jun4.161115.3327@welch.jhu.edu>
Date: 4 Jun 91 16:11:15 GMT
References: <1991May24.224602.19130@netcom.COM> <1991Jun3.031554.20350@dbase.A-T.COM>
Reply-To: glenn@welchlab.welch.jhu.edu (Glenn M. Mason)
Organization: Welch Medical Library, Baltimore
Lines: 18

In article <1991Jun3.031554.20350@dbase.A-T.COM> awd@dbase.A-T.COM (Alastair Dallas) writes:
>In article <1991May24.224602.19130@netcom.COM>, rsinger@netcom.COM (Richard Singer) writes:
>> I am writing an application which needs to share dbase files  with Dbase 
>> III/III+/IV over a network.  Does anyone know how these dbase versions 
>> lock files/records? or any reference which might describe this.
>
>This question was asked and answered a few months ago.  Sorry, but you
>can't easily do it--the locking protocol is proprietary to Ashton-Tate,
>trade secrets and all that.  If you or someone else figures it out by
>reverse-engineering, that's in violation of the license agreement.  
>
>...
>Sorry it's no help.  My advice is let your app write transaction files
>which the dBASE app batch updates from periodically in exclusive mode.

Yet another reason to upgrade this dinasaur to a real RDBMS ...

;^)