Accessing Data with ODBCDirect

This chapter describes how to use Microsoft Jet to access ODBC data on remote servers. ODBCDirect provides a second way to access ODBC data. With ODBCDirect, you can write code in your application that uses DAO to access data sources directly. Your code does not have to be processed by Microsoft Jet. There are several advantages to ODBCDirect:

• Your application’s performance improves because your queries and their result sets don’t have to go through Microsoft Jet.
• You get broader access to server-specific functionality, including some operations that aren’t possible when you are using Microsoft Jet. For example, you can use ODBCDirect to specify input values for a stored procedure.
• You can perform asynchronous queries, which means that your application does not have to wait until a query is finished before performing other operations.
• You can cache recordset updates locally and then submit the changes to a server in a single batch.

Though ODBCDirect has these advantages, it does not provide many of the advanced features that Microsoft Jet provides, such as support for linked tables and heterogeneous data access. However, you can use the features of both Microsoft Jet and ODBCDirect simultaneously in your applications to optimize performance, and to develop your applications as quickly and efficiently as possible.

See Also   For more information on ODBCDirect, see the Microsoft Office 97/Visual Basic Programmer’s Guide, or search the Help index for “What’s New in DAO?”