Database transactions are always susceptible to deadlock: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/innodb-deadlocks.html Looking at the last example on this page: http://api.drupal.org/api/group/database/7 Surely in catch{}, the exception should be examined for ER_LOCK_DEADLOCK? The entire transaction could be in a do-while loop, so it is continually reattempted until the transaction does not deadlock. ER_LOCK_DEADLOCK is mysql specific. Does the new db layer have an abstraction for this? -- Jonathan Brown Blue Droplet Media http://bluedroplet.com/