Reducing Multiuser Database Lock Conflicts

Summary

The information in this article applies to LIMS 1.x and Access 2.0.

Users running LIMS in a multiuser environment may encounter database lock conflict messages. A variety of factors including network performance affect the frequency of these messages. This article describes some of the factors to consider and the multiuser settings affecting lock conflicts.

More Information

If you experience frequent lock conflict messages when running in a multiuser environment, perform the following steps.<

1. Use the Administration menu’s System Configuration screen to set the following multiuser options:

• Set the Update Retry Interval to the maximum of 1000 milliseconds (one second)
• Set the Number of Update Retries to the maximum of 10.

2. On each workstation, add the following line to the [ISAM] section of the LIMS.INI file in the Windows directory:

• PageTimeout=300

If frequent lock conflict messages continue to occur, you should evaluate the overall performance of your network and network server. Begin by comparing the performance of LIMS when using both server-based and local copies of LIMSDATA.MDB. Time the performance of lengthy queries and reports against both databases.

If there is a significant degradation in performance when using the server-based LIMSDATA, contact your network administrator to investigate the problem. Factors affecting network performance include the network operating system, topology, cabling, interface cards, server RAM, server disk speed/capacity, and concurrent users.