Microsoft KB Archive/168342

{| = INFO: Choosing the Right VB5 Data Access Interface =
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Last reviewed: May 30, 1997

Article ID: Q168342 The information in this article applies to:
 * 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.