Definition: ADO

(ActiveX Data Objects) A programming interface from Microsoft that is designed as "the" Microsoft standard for data access. First used with Internet Information Server, ADO is a set of COM objects that provides an interface to OLE DB. The three primary objects are Connection, Command and Recordset. The Connection object establishes a connection with a particular database management system (DBMS) or other data source. It can also send a query to the database. The Command object is an alternate way of sending a query to the database, and the Recordset object contains the resulting answer, which is a group of records. See OLE DB, RDO, DAO and ODBC.

Object Libraries
ADO provides several object libraries for processing data. ADODB (ADO DataBase) is used to establish connections and retrieve recordsets. ADOX (ADO eXtension for Data Definition Language and Security) is used to create a database schema and create tables as well as deal with security issues. JRO (Jet and Replication Objects) is used to replicate and compact Microsoft Jet databases.

ADO.NET
ADO.NET is the .NET version of ADO, which is substantially different from ADO. It supports XML documents and relies on .NET Data Providers as an interface layer between the application and the databases.




ADO Interfaces