Chapter 11: Collaboration Data Objects

Overview

As you saw in Chapter 10, you can use Microsoft Active Server Pages (ASP) or Microsoft ASP.NET to develop powerful Web applications that are not dependent on the capabilities of the browser. This power of ASP comes not from the built-in libraries of the ASP object model but from COM components that you call from your ASP programs. In this chapter and the next one, you'll learn about one of those COM components ”Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) ”which enables you to develop messaging and collaboration applications for the Web. You can use CDO for other purposes as well, such as in client-based or server-based applications that you develop. In this chapter, you will learn what CDO is and how it compares to other technologies, what objects are in the CDO library, and how you can start developing ASP programs. In Chapter 12, you'll see a Microsoft Visual Basic application that takes advantage of this library.