INFO: Choosing the Right VB5 Data Access Interface

• ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) when used with:
• Microsoft Visual Basic Professional and Enterprise Editions for Windows, version 5.0

SUMMARY

This article presents a summary of the more common features found in ADO, DAO, and RDO, comparing them to help you decide which object model is the best choice.

MORE INFORMATION

With the release of Visual Basic 5.0 Enterprise Edition and ADO/DB version 1.0, RDO is a superset of ADO. In the future, ADO will become a superset of RDO. If ADO does what you need today, use it for future compatibility also. If it does not, then either DAO or RDO is likely to be your best choice at this time.

To help make that decision, the following table presents a list of major features found in either ADO, DAO, or RDO.

                                    ADO 1.0   DAO 3.5   RDO 1.0   RDO 2.0
                                    -------   -------   -------   -------
   Connect Asynchronously                                            X
   Run Queries Asynchronously                    X         X         X
   Batch Updates and Error Handling    X         X                   X
   Disconnected Recordsets             X                             X
   Events on Column/Field                                            X
   Events on Connection                                              X
   Events on Engine                                                  X
   Events on Resultset/Recordset                                     X
   Events on Query                                                   X
   Threadsafe                          X         X                   X
   Free-Threaded                       X
   In/Out/Return Value Params          X         X         X         X
   Independently-created objects       X         *                   X
   Integration w/ TSQL Debugger                                      X
    and Connection Query Designer                                    X
   MaxRows Property on Queries         X         X         X         X
   Queries As Methods                                                X
   Returned Multiple Recordsets        X         X         X         X
   Efficient Jet Database Access                 X
   Compatibility from Jet -> SQL Srvr            X

   * DDL objects.

REFERENCES

A comprehensive white paper (Choosing the Right Visual Basic Data Access Strategy) discussing ADO, DAO, RDO, and other data access models can be found at the following Web sites:

   http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic/techinfo/Choosing.htm
   http://www.microsoft.com/vbasic/techinfo/choose.doc

Keywords          : adoengdb adovb VBKBDB VBKBNet VBKBObj VBKBRDO
Version           : 5.0
Platform          : WINDOWS
Issue type        : kbinfo