A data-centric application, for the purposes of this book, is an application that relies on a connection to a database, where the bulk of its processing involves querying a database and returning results. You can use Visual Studio tools to build data-centric applications of nearly any size, small to large. Using the development skills you already possess, you can create powerful data-centric applications using the latest data access technologies. One of the technologies that you have probably heard about is ActiveX Data Objects (ADO).
ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) make it possible for your client applications to access and manipulate all types of data through any OLE DB provider. In addition to relational data, you can use ADO to access and manipulate multidimensional data, such as directory services.
The primary benefits of ADO are ease of use, high speed, low memory overhead, and a small disk footprint. ADO supports key features for building client/server and Web-based applications.
ADO also features Remote Data Service (RDS), by which you can move data from a server to a client application or Web page, manipulate the data on the client, and return updates to the server in a single round trip. Previously released as the Advanced Data Connector, RDS has been combined with the ADO programming model to simplify client-side data remoting.
For More Information See the following topics online in MSDN Library Visual Studio 6.0.