The movement of data back and forth from the SQL Server database and the Internet Explorer user interface is handled through objects you can create using ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), a key data access technology. When the user requests the URL for the Corporate Media Library (CML), an Active Server Pages (ASP) page delivers HTML that is dynamically generated by the ASP page. Additional information is requested from the server using an IFrame, an HTML intrinsic control, to launch additional ASP pages that run in the IFrame. These ASP pages, which are usually invisible to the user, create SQL tables, run SQL queries, or instantiate COM components written in Microsoft Visual Basic®. The COM components instantiate ADO server-side objects. These ADO objects make calls to OLE DB to run the SQL stored procedures that provide functionality to the user. The stored procedures return the query results back to the COM component and then to the ASP page. The results are returned to the IFrame in the form of client-side script. The IFrame then binds the results to a Remote Data Service control, a client-side ADO object, using DHTML table binding. At this point the user sees the results of the request.
How the development team chose the BackOffice and other Microsoft technologies used in the CML is discussed in Design Decisions.