This document provides D3-specific information for the developer creating ADO-based applications that will access a D3 database.
The document contains the following information:
Background about Microsoft’s transition from ODBC to OLE DB and ADO.
D3 components needed to use ADO.
Information about ADO installation.
Available methods and properties for ADO objects.
Syntax for connecting to a D3 database.
For additional information about ADO and OLE DB, go to Microsoft’s Universal Data Access Web site (http://www.microsoft.com/).
The following sections are presented in this guide:
Available methods and properties of ADO objects
Considerations for the D3 developer using ADO
Over the years, ODBC has become the industry-standard interface for “connecting” client applications to databases. In recent years, however, Microsoft revamped it’s data access strategy and delivered OLE DB as the successor to ODBC. In addition, a high-level programming interface called ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) has been introduced to work on top of OLE DB, just as DAO and RDO work with ODBC.
To assist in the transition from ODBC-based development to OLE DB-based development, Microsoft has provided an OLE DB provider that allows ADO to connect to any ODBC data source. This provider is called Microsoft’s OLE DB Provider for ODBC, also known as MSDASQL.
The following D3 components are required to develop ADO-based applications that access a D3 database:
Any D3 Unix or D3 NT server product, version 7.1 or above.
D3 ODBC client software, version 7.1.C17 or above.
D3 ODBC server software, version 7.1.S9 or above.
ADO is automatically installed and registered with components of Visual Studio 6.0 (Visual Basic, Visual C++, and Visual Interdev). Users of Visual Studio 5.0 components can download for free the Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.0 SDK, which contains ADO. This download is available at http://www.microsoft.com/.