Locking Object Definitions

You can lock an object so that its definition cannot be changed by any ZOM service (until it is unlocked). When an object is locked, it cannot be erased, deleted, destroyed, recreated, moved, renamed, and so on. Locking an object is similar to write protecting the object.

You can set and reset the locked property for an object(s) using the ‘L’ property indicator and the ZOMSet service. For example, to lock all objects named Employees, enter

ZOMSet Employees ;p l

To unlock the same objects, use the negation indicator (!) as shown below:

ZOMSet Employees ;p l!

If you lock a Zim directory object, all the objects belonging to that directory are implicitly locked as well. Thus, the following example locks all objects in the Release3 directory:

ZOMSet Release3 ;p l

Unlocking a directory object implicitly unlocks all objects belonging to that directory that have not been explicitly locked individually.

Note: A ZOM lock locks the object only as far as the ZOM services are concerned. A ZOM lock does not prevent the object from being changed directly using the standard CREATE, ERASE, and RENAME commands. However, changes made in the Development Center, where ZOM is always enabled, respect any object locks.
Locks in ZOM are separate from locking enabled in multi-user applications to control concurrent access to a database.