Here's a quick recap and further clarification of the situation.

1.    I'm using fpw2.6 to connect to vfp5 database container.
2.    Driver has been created and loaded in odbc.ini.
3.    Datasource has been created.
4.    I'm using calls from the fpsql.fll library from MS Connectivity Kit.
5.    My dbconnect call is successful and returns a valid connection channel.
6.    My dbexec call with an sql "use" statement is successful in opening the specified database container.
7.    Further tries have produced successful use of the "add table", "remove table", and "alter table" commands to add and remove tables to and from the in use database container, as well as adding and removing columns from the table.
8.    Still unsuccessful are the "select" statements sent through the dbexec() function.  I have tried these using all permutations of (dbf filename, alias name, long table name) in the from clause and (table name, cursor name, nothing) in the optional cursor/table parameter.  (Thank you, Ralph for the suggestion of "*" in place of all.  I'll give that a shot tomorrow at work.)
9.    Another unsuccessful command sent through dbexec() was the "insert into" command.  On this one as well as the "select" commands, I get a (-1) connection level error.

In summary, the common denominators that I see are that the successes are occurring in file and structure related commands, while the errors are occurring in the data related commands.

Thanks, again, for any input.

Ray Heilman <><
CalMeRay@GTE.Net