Microsoft has six major SQL interface solutions: Visual Basic SQL (VBSQL), Open Database Connectivity (ODBC), Data Access Objects (DAO)/Jet, DAO/ODBCDirect, Remote Data Objects (RDO), and ActiveX Data Objects (ADO). William Vaughn covers all of them in this book, plus the low-level SQL Server interfaces. He includes quite a lot of sample code (in the text and on the companion CD-ROM) that shows how different access mechanisms open connections, perform queries, and return values. Sidebars and other supplementary nuggets of text use the first person to great effect--they enable Vaughn to share his considerable experience in a straightforward way.

ADO, the apparent replacement for most of Microsoft's other database-access technologies, receives especially lavish treatment. The author details each part of an ADO-facilitated transaction, and goes into depth on how to build custom ADO objects and how (and whether) to convert from RDO to ADO.