I get an unexpected message about the database being locked, how
can I open the database?
When starting SM-Reports you may see the following message if more than
one person tries to access the main database at the same time.
- Cannot open database because it is locked by another user.
This message can also occur if SM-Reports was not fully closed the
previous time it was used.
How locking works
When SM-Reports is run and a database is opened a file named LOCK.TXT
is created in the same folder as the SDB files that are the SM-Reports
database. If another person tries to open the same database and the
file LOCK.TXT is already present then that database cannot be
opened and the above message is shown. The same occurs when a database
is opened with the File|Database|Use command. When you exit from
SM-Reports, or switch to another database, the LOCK.TXT file
is deleted to indicate that the database is now available for use.
Unexpected lock
If the message indicating that the database is locked appears and you
are certain that no one else is using SM-Reports, the following may
have occurred. SM-Reports has previously unexpectedly shutdown and the LOCK.TXT
file was not deleted. In this case, you can use Windows Explorer or My
Computer to display the folder with the SM-Reports database and then
delete the LOCK.TXT file. Before doing this, be
absolutely sure that no one else could be using SM-Reports as the
Supervisor or Administrator.
