Roy,

<< Is it not technically possible to re-introduce a working RecNo as a
somehow switchable option? >>

No,  it relies on the indexes maintaining statistics in them that cause a
very large amount of overhead equal to a page update for every level of the
index for inserts, updates, and deletes.  For example, an update in DBISAM
(with statistics) on an index that is 3 levels deep would require as much as
6 page updates, whereas in EDB it would only require as much as 2 page
updates, and possibly as little as 1.

--
Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com