The best thing about this book has to be its comprehensive tour of Microsoft database APIs over the years (from ODBC, DAO and RDO) to today's Universal Data Access (UDA) strategy centred on OLE DB and ADO. This book also shows where UDA fits in with Microsoft's recommended approach for building applications on the Web (which take advantage of multi-tiered architectures). If you want to manipulate database objects (such as modifying databases and tables), you'll want to look at the sections on ADOX here. And if you find yourself having to write a custom OLE DB Provider, tutorial sections will show you how (plus there's a working sample of a custom provider that hooks into the Windows registry).

There is plenty for the enterprise programmer here, with coverage of the new Active Directory in Windows 2000, plus background on LDAP and using the ASDI interfaces for programming with corporate directory information. The book culminates with a useful case study on a business-to-business e-commerce (for an online florist, with virtual suppliers). Most of the code here uses Visual Basic, though there is mention of Visual C++ as well. Reference sections on all ADO APIs (and constants) will help make this title a must for the working programmer.

There are many facets to today's database standards in the Microsoft platform. Professional ADO 2.5 Programming covers virtually all of them, with a detailed tour of a lot of useful information that can benefit any intermediate or advanced developer. --Richard Dragan

This book is exactly that for ADO 2.5

I have been using ADO for almost a year mainly with SQL Server connections and VB, and thought I knew most things about ADO. How wrong I was !

In the first chapters of this book, I found an easy to read description of the overall concepts of where ADO fits into the surrounding Misrosoft world. Items that I knew only limited details about became clear, and any reference to complex features contained a reference to later in the book.

The book is split into chapters that, after reading chapter 1, you can read individually. Great style and full of snippets of code examples. Yes, I know some have errors, but most are typos and easy to spot. Most readers that complain about code not working, are not reading the book, but just copying code in the hope it will work (try using the grey cells).

Overall this is the best ADO book I have read, and it also covers other topics in a manner I wish more authors would adopt.