Chapter 14: Using ADS from Visual Basic and ADO

Overview

ADO (ActiveX data objects) provides the API part of MDAC (Microsoft Data Access Components). MDAC is the implementation of Microsoft’s Universal Data Access strategy, which is aimed at providing a high-performance, language-independent data access layer in the Windows operating system.

This chapter provides you with an introduction to MDAC, and ADO in particular. Because ADO is language neutral, the examples presented in this chapter could have been produced using any one of a wide variety of programming languages. Due to its popularity, and heavy reliance on ADO for data access, we have chosen Visual Basic.

This chapter begins with a high-level introduction to ADO and OLE DB. It then continues by showing you how to access your ADS data using ADO.