It'll not work if cursor has field names longer than 10 characters because ALTER TABLE creates intermediate free table in the process.

>I execute a SQL command to pull some fields into a cursor. Part of the select command is'{ } as mydate'. I've made
>sure that the cursor is created with the readwrite and nofilter clauses. After the query, I then try to drop one of the columns
> (please don't tell me to exclude it in the first place) using:
>
>Alter table mytable drop column mycol
>
>and I get the following error message, "Invalid operation for the cursor".
>
>If I select "Help", it says, "An attempt was made to use the PACK command on a cursor."
>
>If I suspend the program and modify the structure of the cursor (manually drop the column) no error is thrown.
>
>I'm thinking that what I'd done manually should be capable of being done via code using the alter table...drop...command.
>What am I doing wrong?
>
>Now here's the weird part. If I exclude the part, '{ } as mydate' from the SQL, there is no problem.
>So, I guess my question is, how do I get an empty date field in my cursor AND be able to execute ALTER TABLE...DROP COLUMN...?
>
>TIA.