it's ok, I've worked it out, the next pk value field was called 'value' apparently you cant update a field named value through odbc, I changed the field name in the base database to 'nextpk' recreated the remote view and all works fine.

While I'm here though can anyone point me to a list of field names I cant use if using remote views? it's pretty annoying when all works fine on a local view and you get something like this with the highly useless syntax error message.

anyone?