I just came across something that I am amazed I have not noticed before, and I would like to confirm it with the experts.

Using a form's data environment, the controls on a form are actually interacting with a cursor created by the data environment. A cursor, cursor1, is created from table.dbf with the alias "table". Reading and writing is from/to the cursor "table", not from/to table.dbf.

If buffering is off, any changes to the cursor "table" are immediately written to table.dbf, but if buffering is on, changes await one of two events: (1) moving from the current record or (2) a programmatic update, (or (3) are there others?)

So far elementary. But...

SELECT FROM does not operate on the cursor, but on the underlying table. So any changes one may make to the cursor are not necessarily reflected in the SELECT FROM results unless one first updates the underlying table.

Which leads to the following inquiries:

(1) Are my observations above correct?

(2) Is there any easy way to force SELECT FROM to access the cursor "table" rather than table.dbf.

(3) Am I an idiot for having failed to realize the above relationships before now?

Any and all comments would be appreciated.

regards,