>It seems to me that although I can create a view quite readily from free FPW 2.6 tables I can't make the update work since a primary key needs to be assigned to the 2.6 tables, and so they would need to be in the DBC for this to work.
>Is there another way?

You actually could specify a regular key and take steps to ensure it's uniqueness; you can include free tables, which can't have primary keys, in a view easily enough, but you'll want to use a tool like Erik Moore's EView to handle them.