hi,

• Say you retrieve a set of records from the datastore (something like: select * from MyClass where reserved='false').

• how do i ensure that another user doesn't set the reserved is still false?

I've looked in the Transaction documentation and got shocked from google's solution which is to catch the exception and retry in a loop.

Any solution that I'm missing - it's hard to believe that there's no way to have an atomic operation in this environment.

(btw - i could use 'syncronize' inside the servlet but i think it's not valid as there's no way to ensure that there's only one instance of the servlet object, isn't it? same applies to static variable solution)

Any idea on how to solve???

(here's the google solution:

http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/java/datastore/transactions.html#Entity_Groups

look at:

Key k = KeyFactory.createKey("Employee", "k12345");
        Employee e = pm.getObjectById(Employee.class, k);
        e.counter += 1;
        pm.makePersistent(e);

This requires a transaction because the value may be updated by another user after this code fetches the object, but before it saves the modified object. Without a transaction, the user's request will use the value of counter prior to the other user's update, and the save will overwrite the new value. With a transaction, the application is told about the other user's update. If the entity is updated during the transaction, then the transaction fails with an exception. The application can repeat the transaction to use the new data.

THANKS!