Microsoft Office Data Access Technologies

This content is no longer actively maintained. It is provided as is, for anyone who may still be using these technologies, with no warranties or claims of accuracy with regard to the most recent product version or service release.

Historically, Microsoft Office applications have supported a broad variety of data formats and data access technologies. Microsoft Office 2000 is no exception to this trend. However, all Microsoft products that support data access are converging on a new data access strategy called Universal Data Access. The primary technologies that are used to implement Universal Data Access are the low-level data access component architecture, called OLE DB, and the higher-level programming interface to OLE DB, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). ADO can be used from any programming language that complies with the Component Object Model (COM), which for Office solution development includes Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), Visual Basic Scripting Edition (VBScript), and Microsoft JScript, and may also include Microsoft Visual C++ and Microsoft Visual J++ if those languages are used to develop COM add-ins or ActiveX controls.

Microsoft Office 2000 installs the OLE DB components and the latest version of ADO, ADO 2.1. ADO supports a broader array of data sources than the Data Access Objects (DAO) programming model provided in previous versions of Office. However, Office 2000 applications continue to provide support for DAO through the Microsoft DAO 3.6 object library, so you can run existing solutions that use DAO, or create new solutions that use DAO as well. You can also use both ADO and DAO code in your solution if you want. For more information about converting DAO code to ADO and co-existence issues, see "Choosing ADO or DAO for Working with Access Databases" later in this chapter.