>>> > >>> Is anybody over at the dev team considering what an onerous burden > >>> this is? Is anyone considering doing away with it? Just my 2 cents: more and more databases have to run 24 * 7 , so something has to be done. The last 15 years we also used Informix and we never, never had to unload/load the database because of an upgrade. Perhaps somebody knows how they do the trick? Regards Henk Sanders