Hello Roger, Monday, July 25, 2005, 10:21:54 AM, you wrote: RT> I am quite new at all these stuff and would like to seek your RT> advise on the *recommended way* of achieving this. I am thinking RT> along these lines: RT> a) store that number (12345) in a table RT> b) a user registers and assign that number to him RT> c) increment number to 12346 RT> d) process repeats for the next registration RT> Concern: How do tell mySQL to lock the 'number' table when a RT> new registration process is about to take place. Is locking the RT> best option here or is/are there better ways? Do you HAVE to have a "starting off" number of 12345? If there is no real reason to do this, then use an auto-increment column in MySQL and let that do all the hard work for you! Best regards, Richard Davey -- http://www.launchcode.co.uk - PHP Development Services "I do not fear computers. I fear the lack of them." - Isaac Asimov -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php