A database system and method provide support for a positioned data set modification operation on a collection of data sets involved in a data set query operation, in which the data set modification operation is based on the position of a query execution iterator. At query compile time, the database system generates an iterator position retrieval function and a data set modification function for each data set involved in the query operation. At query execution time, the database system invokes each of the iterator retrieval functions until the iterator position retrieval function for a current open data set returns the current the position of the query execution iterator on that data set. The database system then invokes each of the data set modification functions until the data set modification function for the current open data set performs a data set modification operation at the current position of the query execution iterator specified by the iterator position retrieval function. The system and method may be implemented on single node systems and on multi-node shared-nothing parallelism architectures.