renaming tables while someone is reading

is there a way to rename a table that someone is reading. we do not use transactions - so the reads are all dirty reads. the scenario is as follows: we are loading large amounts of data into the database tables. mainly, we load into copies of the real table and once the load has been verified, we drop the original table and rename the working table. the problem comes up when someone is reading the real table and we attempt to rename it. we want to be able to rename the real table to a standard name (such as drop_this_table###) and have a daemon process which drops all tables that have that name format. this allows the original reader to continue reading the old data and all new readers to read the new data. the daemon process would only drop the table after all readers had finished. any suggestions? ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | . . Bob Baskett | ... ... Software Engineer, DBA | ..... ..... Business Systems Integration Group | .. ... .. Semiconductor Products Sector | . . . Mesa, AZ | | Motorola, Inc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Sun 690-MP Informix Versions: Online - 5.00.UC2 ISQL - 4.10.UD1 4GL-RDS- 4.10.UC1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------