JdBP> I did try to design a messagebase server once.  The 
 JdBP> problem is that to do
 JdBP> it _right_ you still end up addressing many of the 
 JdBP> same coherency problems
 JdBP> for the multiple service threads that you would address if you had
 JdBP> multiple processes all accessing the messagebase 
 JdBP> directly with a DLL API.

Yes,  I know --- I was a) trying not to scare him off,  and b) you have the
same issues, but you don't have to use file locking as the solution. File
locking is very mid 80's garbage,  and bogs networks (and servers) down.

Designing a bbs message system (short of using a separate file for each
message) is pretty difficult;  there are more difficult issues to deal with
than multi-user access (free space allocation and reclamation are pretty
darn hard!).


--- Maximus/2 3.00