You receive a "The database must be opened exclusively" error message in Visual FoxPro

WORKAROUND

If you receive the error "The database must be opened exclusively" at design time, all developers must close the database before you can proceed.

To prevent this error from occurring at run time when manipulating views or connections, create a local database for each user. All users will have exclusive access to their database, and will also be able to update the table records contained in a centralized, shared database.

To verify whether or not a database is open exclusively, use the ISEXCLUSIVE() function. The syntax for the ISEXCLUSIVE() function is: When the nType parameter has a value of 2, the function returns the exclusive status for a database. The following example code makes sure the database is open exclusively before using the INDEX ON command:

   CLOSE ALL
   OPEN DATABASE SYS(2004)+"SAMPLES\DATA\TESTDATA"
   SELECT 0
   USE CUSTOMER
   IF ISEXCLUSIVE('testdata',2)
      INDEX ON CITY TAG CITY
      ELSE
      =MESSAGEBOX("Database must be opened Exclusively")
   ENDIF
   CLOSE DATABASE
				

NOTE: The above code uses CLOSE ALL to close all the files so that the database can be opened but not selected, making the CLOSE DATABASE command useless. Of course using CLOSE DATABASE ALL might not be helpful if only one database needs to be closed. Therefore, issue the following code to select a certain database to close and reopen:

   SET DATABASE TO <dbc name>
   CLOSE DATABASE
   OPEN DATABASE <dbc name> EXCLUSIVE
					

This ensures that the correct database container is selected, closed, and reopened.