Is there any way that an AJAX object can get back a record set?

You could build an XML document out of your recordset and send that back to the server, say you had a redord set for a "user" with the following details (name, surname, age, email), you could build an xml document like this:

Code:
<recordset>
     <user>
         <name>Byron</name>
         <surname>Tymvios</surname>
         <age>25</age>
         <email>email@address.com</email>
     </user>
     <user>
         <name>User</name>
         <surname>Someone</surname>
         <age>39</age>
         <email>myAddy@address.com</email>
     </user>
</recordset>

You can add as many records as you have in your recordset, then once the client has received it you can use javascript to iterate over the <user>'s in the xml.