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[[da:ADO]]
Microsoft '''ADO''' (ActiveX Data Objects) is a [[Component object model]] object for accessing data sources. It provides a layer between [[programming languageslanguage]]s and databases[[database]]s, which allows a developer to write programs which access data, without knowing how the database is implemented. 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 is that this introduces a dependency upon the database.
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 consists of several top-level objects:
:*Connection (represents the connection to the database)
:*Recordset (represents a set of database records)
:*Command (represents a SQL command)
:*Record (represents a set of data, typically from a source other than a database)
:*Stream (represents a stream of data, as from a text file or web page)
:*Error (stores errors)
:*Field (represents a database field)
:*Parameter (represents a SQL parameter)
:*Property (stores information about objects)
ADO is used in conjunction with a high-level language, such as [[VBScript programming language|VBScript]] in an [[ASPActive Server Pages]] (ASP) environment. Here is an ASP example using ADO to select the "Name" field, from a table called "Phonebook", where a "PhoneNumber" was equal to "555-5555".
dim myconnection, myrecordset, name
set myconnection = nothing
This is equivalent to the following [[Active Server Pages|ASP]] code, which uses plain SQL, instead of the functionality of the Recordset object:
dim myconnection, myrecordset, name
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