nice, good article never thought about how your could use vertical tables to solve that, and will also go and look at sequences in the next sql release!.

Can I ask why in the original code the lock on the kvp was required for the duration of the whole buniness transaction. Could they just not of got the required key values into some temps using some short transactions before the main long running business process transaction took place?

come to think about it, the kvp would not even need to be in a transaction if all they want is to increment a seed, a single update key statement to increment and at the same time assign the read value to a temp.

thanks;-)