Setting Up RDS

The following steps (all client-side activities) are the same whether you will be using an RDS handler or not. These steps assume you have the basic software in place, specifically ADO on the Web server and RDS on the client computers. RDS is installed with Microsoft Internet Explorer.

1. Instantiate an RDS data control (an ActiveX control) for each batch of data to be retrieved or written, in statements such as <object id=RDS_Author … clsid=….> The clsid is a 128-bit integer registered in the system registry when ADO is installed. The RDS data control communicates automatically with the RDS Datafactory object (see step 4).
2. Indicate information about where the data will be accessed by setting RDS properties:
   RDS.Server="http://<%Request.ServerVariable(ServerName)…"
   RDS.Connect="<%Application(ConnectionString)…".
3. Create the SQL query with RDS.SQL="SELECT * FROM …"
4. Issue the RDS.Refresh command. This passes the SQL query (and parameters containing information about the server and the connection string) from the client to the server-side RDS Datafactory object, which contains a Query method.

To use an RDS handler, follow the steps in Setting Up RDS to Use a Handler. To use RDS without a handler, see Steps in RDS Data Retrieval (No Handler).