ADO: ActiveX Data Objects

Summary

This chapter has explained how to access and use ActiveX Data Objects with the five most commonly used Microsoft development languages: Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual J++, VBScript, and JScript. The following is a list of key points:

• Visual Basic is an easy language with which to develop ActiveX Data Object applications due to its minimal setup.

• Visual C++ offers a keyword, #import, to help create type library information for ADO enumerations (groups of constants) and interfaces. In addition, OLE must be instantiated before any ActiveX Data Objects are created at all.

• Visual J++ uses the Java Type Library Wizard to create type library information for ADO enumerations and interfaces.

• VBScript and JScript can be used through Active Server Pages to provide requesting clients with static HTML pages based upon an OLE DB data source.

• The interface for ActiveX Data Objects is extremely similar throughout all of the languages we have looked at, making it easy to move your skills from one language to another.

The next chapter in this book, Chapter 4, deals with the most fundamental object within ADO, the Connection object. This object is used to create a session with a data source and to create different views with the data source’s data.