MDAC Distribution, Past and Present

Summary: The Microsoft® Data Access Components (MDAC) library and the MDAC SDK have grown and changed with each release. This article details the contents for each important release version and provides detailed information about redistributing MDAC.

Introduction

This article provides details about each release of MDAC. Some releases were incorporated into releases of other programs or updates, and some were made available individually. Some releases were complete, and some were not. Understanding the details of each release may help diagnose and correct configuration problems with data access technologies.

If you must redistribute the components in MDAC, be sure to use the redistributable program. Microsoft cannot provide effective support if you distribute them any other way. See the section in this article titled Redistributing MDAC for more information.

You may be interested in tools that assist in diagnosing configuration problems with MDAC. One tool, formerly called ClsidView (KnowledgeBase article Q176562, "Clsidvw.exe OLE/Createable Objects Registry Diagnostic," has more information on this tool), has now become the tool Component Checker. It is available as part of the MDAC 2.5 SDK. This tool compares the configuration of a workstation to a database of known good configurations and reports any errors or discrepancies. Among other useful features, Component Checker can completely remove an installation of MDAC.

Note The Microsoft Universal Data Access Web site has release manifests that detail the contents and installation instructions for the current versions of MDAC.

For specific information about MDAC history and distribution, see the following topics in this article: