MDAC 2.5 SDK - Overview of the MDAC SDK
The Microsoft® Windows® 2000 release of MDAC 2.5 introduces several changes and enhancements to the SDK. See individual technology sections, listed at the end of this topic, for more detailed information about what's new.
A new readme file, MDACSDKReadme.htm, replaces several readmes that were included with previous releases of the Data Access SDK. The MDAC SDK Readme contains information previously included in the following files:
There is a new index for all of the MDAC documentation. Also, all of the illustrations in the MDAC documentation have been updated and redesigned to make them easier to read.
MDAC 2.5 contains new or updated reference information about using ADO and OLE DB:
Code examples have been added in many places throughout the MDAC SDK, including the following:
Many of the articles for the MDAC 2.5 SDK have been updated, moved, or incorporated into the OLE DB or ADO documentation. If you can't find an article or information you need, see Article Finder for its new whereabouts.
These new articles have been added:
The following four articles incorporate information from overview articles that had been published before, as well as new information. (See the Article Finder for more information about articles that have been updated, replaced, or retired.)
To see these articles and others not listed here, plus the latest information about the MDAC SDK, events, patches, downloads, and links to related material, see the Microsoft Data Access Web site.
The MDAC 2.5 SDK contains a preview release of the Component Checker tool, which is designed to help you determine installed version information and diagnose installation issues with MDAC components. Component Checker runs on the following operating systems: Microsoft® Windows® 98, Windows NT® 4.0, and Windows 2000. Only 32-bit and 64-bit platforms are supported. Component Checker includes a predetermined list of MDAC versions, which it uses to analyze the version of MDAC on your computer. For the latest information about Component Checker, or to download newer versions of the tool as they become available, see the Downloads page at www.microsoft.com/data.
Component Checker is customizable and performs the following tasks:
The preview release of the Component Checker tool also is available at www.microsoft.com/data. The self-extracting .exe file contains all installation files for the tool to operate properly. It also contains an online help file, which is accessible from the Component Checker Help menu.
OLE DB 2.5 includes a row object to help model semistructured data stores. It also includes direct URL binding support to make it easier for OLE DB consumers to create OLE DB objects.
ADO has added a Record object and a Stream object. And as an alternative to connection strings and command text, this release of ADO introduces the use of Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) to specify data sources and the location of files, directories, and tables. The documentation contains enhanced example topics, demonstrating ADO usage in Microsoft Visual C++® and Microsoft Visual J++®. For more information about ADO 2.5, see What's New in ADO.
The Visual FoxPro ODBC Driver documentation is new to the MDAC SDK for version 2.5.
The Microsoft ActiveX® Control Writer Toolkit has been removed from the MDAC SDK. It is recommended that you use the Visual C++ Active Template Library (ATL) and Microsoft Foundation Classes for COM (MFC COM) instead.
The OLE DB Query Demo sample has been replaced by an expanded Rowset Viewer for MDAC 2.5. Rowset Viewer now allows you to view and manipulate rowsets, with the added ability to call and manipulate other OLE DB methods from the data source, session, command, rowset, dataset, transaction, and notification objects supported by any OLE DB provider. Rowset Viewer has been upgraded to the OLE DB 2.5 specification and offers more functionality than Query Demo.
The OLE DB for OLAP Dataset Viewer sample has been replaced by an expanded Rowset Viewer for MDAC 2.5. See the previous paragraph for details.
The Online Catalog and Order Placement Sample has been removed from the MDAC SDK for version 2.5.
To simplify the Windows 2000 user interface, the Microsoft Data Link entry was removed from the right-click menu available from the desktop or Windows Explorer. To create a data link, create a new text file, save it with a .udl extension, and then double-click it to open the Data Link Properties dialog box.
To improve connection performance using .udl files, it is now possible to cache the connection information using a new registry key, "Udl Pooling", and a Cache Size greater than 0. This feature is described in the Data Link API Overview.
The ODBC Data Source Administrator is available from the Windows 2000 Control Panel, but it is located one level deeper. To find it, you will need to double-click the new Administrative Tools icon in Control Panel.
For more detailed information about what's new and changed in specific MDAC technologies, see the following: