>>If I understand you correctly, you want to be able to access a table and change a field (in this case a DATE) FROM THE COMMAND WINDOW and then have any other program using that same file "see" the changed field right away. But you do NOT want to issue FLUSH from the COMMAND window. Since you do not want to issue flush, I guess you do not want to issue USE either.
>
>Well, I never had to do this before. I never used FLUSH before. Something is causing this behavior and I don't see what it is. That's why I suspect something in the background.

If the modif is done in other app (or instance of same app), I don't believe FLUSH will help. Open the table again if possible. In this way, you can be sure the last data is read from disk. Although, this way it's slow.

Vlad