>>FWIW, DBFs don't have a record pointer either...
>
>Things like skip,next, goto and seek (and the like) to navigate the logical order of the table. I thought a record pointer was required for these functions.

DBF is a data storage format.

Visual Foxpro is a language that can use the concept of a record pointer to navigate a cursor.

Visual Foxpro can use any data source that is accessible via ODBC. It can pull SQL Server data, DBF data, even Excel data into a cursor, which it can navigate using record pointers.

VFP can also access any data that has an ODBC driver or OLEDB provider using ADO, which, incidentally uses a data navigation scheme based on the record pointer.

My point was that backends don't 'have' record pointers, or even 'use' record pointers, front-ends do.