Microsoft ADO (ActiveX Data Objects) is an COM object for accessing data sources. It provides a layer between programming languages and databases, 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.
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)
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).