>first check would be key column after insert and update pattern...
>perhaps log called in hook methods on record level of CRUD executing from CA

Followed those in the debugger and it found no errors. Then traced it in the profiler (express profiler, that is - much easier on a single user machine) and saw that the where clause of the update statement was quite long. Ran that statement in Toad and it returned no errors, updated no records. Because some of the values mentioned in the where clause were wrong - wrong length or whatever.

Because my cursoradapter class simply defaulted to .wheretype=3. Changed it to 1 and it all works as advertised.