>I sure wish the ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN command allowed you to specify where you wanted the new field to go!

Rich,

ALTER TABLE ADD COLUMN is SQL, SQL is relational, and relational says that we shouldn't know or care where the field is physically located in the table structure. We should refer to the field by its name. That's why ALTER TABLE doesn't allow you to position the field.

The work around is exactly what you described, revert to xBase which is not relational in nature.