Microsoft® ActiveX® Data Objects (ADO) enable your client applications to access and manipulate data in a database server through any OLE DB provider.
ADO enables you to write an application to access and manipulate data in a database server through an OLE DB provider. ADO's primary benefits are ease of use, high speed, low memory overhead, and a small disk footprint. ADO supports key features for building client/server and Web-based applications.
ADO also features Remote Data Service (RDS), by which you can move data from a server to a client application or Web page, manipulate the data on the client, and return updates to the server in a single round trip. Previously released as Microsoft Remote Data Service 1.5, RDS has been combined with the ADO programming model to simplify client-side data remoting.
For more information about ADO and how RDS integrates with it, see Getting Started with ADO.