Tim,
If you have to add general or memo fields, I'd use Cetin's suggestion. For other field types, you can do it directly in the SQLEXEC():

SQLEXEC(h,"SELECT *, 0000.00 AS nFld, '      ' AS cFld from ARTICLE", "XXX")

Use CURSORGETPROP("SourceType") to get the type of table/view.

HTH
>On the following code example in VFP7...
>
>SQLEXEC(h,'select * from ARTICLE',"XXX")
>ALTER TABLE XXX ADD &cPicGname g(4)
>
>I get "Function is not supported on remote tables (Error 1525)"
>
>What's the easiest way to add the column to the table?
>Note that I have an additional consideration in that I may need
>to add one to ten columns and the cursor could sometimes be very large
>so a select is not the best.
>
>I was hoping for something like:
>USE DBF("XXX") AGAIN IN 0 ALIAS yyy
>ALTER TABLE yyy ADD &cPicGname g(4)
>
>
>BR
>Tim