Visual Basic Concepts

About the Data Environment Designer

See Also

The Data Environment designer provides an interactive, design time environment for creating programmatic run-time data access. At design time, you set property values for Connection and Command objects, write code to respond to ActiveX® Data Object (ADO) events, execute commands, and create aggregates and hierarchies. You can also drag Data Environment objects onto forms or reports to create data-bound controls.

With the Data Environment designer, you can accomplish the following tasks:

Differences Between the UserConnection and Data Environment Designers

The Data Environment designer provides a means to easily access data in your Visual Basic project. In previous releases, you used the ActiveX UserConnection designer to create Remote Data Objects (RDO) at design time. Now, you can create ADO objects at design time using the Data Environment designer. In addition to supporting all of the functionality of the UserConnection designer, the Data Environment designer supports:

Functionality Comparison: UserConnection designer vs. Data Environment designer


Functionality
UserConnection designer Data Environment designer
Data Access exposed using… Remote Data Objects (RDO). ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).
Objects exposed include... only one RDO connection with multiple queries. multiple ADO Connection and Command objects within one DataEnvironment object.
Events exposed include... only events from the UserConnection object. all ADO events for the Connection and Command object.
Direct data binding... cannot be used as a direct data source. can be directly bound to controls on a form.
Programmatic access exposes… queries as methods from the UserConnection object with one ResultSet property. Command objects as methods from the DataEnvironment object, with one RecordSet property per Command object.
Design environment provides… a basic view that only displays the list of queries in the UserConnection. two views of objects that list Connection and Command objects, as well as the Field objects returned from each Command object.

Topics