That's not a bad idea actually. I'll try doing it that way if my current method doesn't work out very well.
What I'm doing now is simply recording the $file().mtime value in a variable and comparing the variable to the current $file().mtime value at the time of making any changes. If any changes have been made, it refreshes the database and then alerts the user they'll have to repeat the action they just did (as the field they're trying to work with could have already been updated or removed by somebody else).
Cheers
