Chapter 1. Introduction to ADO

In today's computing environments, data exists in many formats, ranging from Access and SQL Server databases to Word documents, email messages, and many others. ADO, or ActiveX Data Objects, data-access technology simplifies use of data from multiple sources, thus freeing developers from learning data, vendor-specific API calls, and any other coding minutiae for each data format involved. With ADO, almost any data source becomes accessible in a consistent way for developers creating standalone applications, client/server applications, or ASP pages.

In this chapter, I define ADO in the historic and current context of Microsoft's overall data-access strategy and related technologies.