>>Technically, I guess you are right
>
>Why the restriction?

I think for the result of the query, if you assign a value first to the 'parameter', it makes no difference whether you use parameter or ?parameter

But I always use the ?

- It's clearer
- I use this ? to find the parameters in the SelectCmd of my cursoradapterclass and map those to properties of the class
I can then use

=  caObj.SetParameter('MyParam', 27)
 = caObj.CursorRefresh()

>Just kidding.