[Samba] How important are oplocks?

[Bob Puff at NLE]

Hello,

I'm wondering just how critical it really is to turn off oplocks.  It appears
that not only Windows 2k server, but also Netware 5 and above defaults to
having these enabled.  

I just spoke with two software companies running databases off of file servers
(no database server, just MDAC stuff), and they had never heard of it, much
less require it to be disabled.  Everything I've read online says to turn them
off, but I'm getting a serious performance hit with these turned off, compared
to the Netware server that Samba just replaced.

Comments???

Bob