>>>>Do you think that will help? I sure can try that. I wasn't aware of the ALIAS command.
>>>
>>>This will not help, bacause the default alias is the name of the table. So USE DEAL ALIAS DEAL and USE DEAL are synonymous.
>>
>>What if DEAL is already open in shared mode? It will open it with different alias (A or B).
>
>If you open a file exclusive, it can not be already opened in shared mode, because then you will receive an error.

Try this with your table:

use Trans in 0 shared
use Trans again in 0 exclusive
set
SELECT 2
?isexclusive()