>In the development environment using VFP 5.0 (old, I know :^Q), the access to a shared table seems to work, but using the production .EXE I've had problems. For example, I have a system shutdown option which polls my KEYUSER table to see if any users are currently in the system. If users are active, it lists them to the SysAdmin user. For some reason, the SysAdmin user's instance of the table still showed the user as active after the user had exited the system (which deletes the user record). Somehow, my system did not see the record as deleted.
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>Any ideas as to why? How are changes to a shared table relayed to concurrent users? Is there any difference in how the runtime version does it vs. std. version?

Sounds like you need to bone up on multi-user access in VFP. :-) The most important point is that there is no mechanism in VFP that automagically "relays" changes back to all users that have the table open. Each user must requery/poll the table to make sure they have the latest information.

Ultimately, you need to obtain a file lock with FLOCK() to be assured of having the most recent information. This technique dates back to the dBASE days. So, you can get the FLOCK(), refresh your control(s), UNLOCK and you're up to date.

If you're buffering your table access, or using views, there are other options available. Check your documentation on these topics.