>Hi Jim,
>
>Is it possible that the database is already opened in shared mode?
>
>Here is some info from VFP documentation:
>"If you open a database twice in succession without closing the database, the database retains the same settings specified with the first DATABASE OPEN command. To change the settings, you need to close the database and then issue the DATABASE OPEN command with new settings."

Hey, this explains what I experienced before - who'd say it was documented :).

I thought that validate database would still need to open some tables exclusively, and that it didn't follow its own "open ... excl" and opened them shared (because there was no "set exclusive on"). But this explains it completely.