ADO stands for ActiveX Data Object. ADO provides an object-oriented programming interface for accessing a data source using the OLE DB data provider. It is the succesor to DAO and RDO object models and combines the best features DAO and RDO. Programming OLE DB in C++ is easy. However, for languages like Visual Basic, that do not support pointers and other C++ features, implementing OLE DB is difficult. This is where ADO really shines. ADO is an high level interface to OLE DB that is based on COM interfaces. Thus any application that supports COM can implement ADO.
