ADO

Here's another post under the label 'Tech terms'. As always, these posts are tagged with label 'Tech terms' to be searched conveniently.

Today's term to understand is ADO:

•  Microsoft's ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) is a set of Component Object Model (COM) objects for accessing data sources

• A part of MDAC(Microsoft Data Access Components), it provides a layer between programming languages and OLE DB (a means of accessing data stores, whether they be databases or otherwise, in a uniform manner)

• ADO allows a developer to write programs that access data without knowing how the database is implemented. You must be aware of your database for connection only. No knowledge of SQL is required to access a database when using ADO, although one can use ADO to execute arbitrary SQL commands. The disadvantage of this (i.e. using SQL directly) is that it introduces a dependency upon the type of database used.

• It is positioned as a successor to Microsoft's earlier object layers for accessing data sources, including RDO (Remote Data Objects) and DAO (Data Access Objects). ADO was introduced by Microsoft in October 1996.