What Is ADO (ActiveX Data Object)?

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Dr. Herong Yang, Version 5.00

∟What Is ADO (ActiveX Data Object)?

This section describes what is ADO ActiveX Data Object - an Application Programming Interface (API) to access relational database management systems.

What Is ADO (ActiveX Data Object)? ADO is an Application Programming Interface (API) to access relational database management systems.

ADO is provided as a DLL, and usually installed at "c:\program files\common files\system\ado\msadox.dll".
ADO can access databases connected through ODBC DSN (Data Source Names).
ADO can also access MS Access database files.
ADO is built on top of OLE DB technology.
ADO API is very similar to DAO (Data Access Object).

If you want your ASP pages to access your customer relation management (CRM) system, which is running on an Oracle database system, you need to:

1. Install an ODBC driver for Oracle database systems.

2. Create a DSN with ODBC that connects to the CRM system on the Oracle database.

3. Create ADO object in the ASP page, and connect it to the DSN.

4. Using the methods offered by the ADO object to update and query the CRM system.

The following diagram illustrates how an ASP page can interact with an Oracle database:

ASP page <-- ADO --> DSN <-- ODBC --> Oracle database

ADO offers two major classes:

Connection: A class representing an access channel to a database system.
RecordSets: A class representing the returning records of data after executing a query command to a database system.

Last update: 2002.

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