Access Database Design & Programming, 3rd Edition

Chapter 18. ADOX: Jet Data Definition in ADO

ADOX is an acronym for ADO Extensions for Data Definition and Security. When making comparisons between ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and Data Access Objects (DAO), proponents of DAO will point out that ADO does not include features for data definition—that is, features that can be used to create and alter databases and their components (tables, columns, indexes, etc.). This is precisely the purpose of ADOX, but not just in the context of Jet databases. ADOX is intended to be a universal data-definition object model. Of course, as with ADO, it requires support from OLE DB data providers. Our concern is with ADOX in relation to Jet.

I plan to discuss the role of ADOX in various data definition operations, such as creating a Jet database and creating and altering Jet database tables.

It is worth mentioning that ADOX is not a complete substitute for DAO’s data-definition features. For example, query creation in ADOX has a serious wrinkle (at least for Access 2000). Namely, a query created using ADOX will not appear in the Access 2000 user interface! We will revisit this issue later in this chapter.

The ADOX Object Model

The ADOX object model is shown in Figure 18-1. The model has 9 object pairs (object/collection), about 75 properties, and about 50 methods—not a very large object model as Microsoft object models go (and smaller than the ADO object model). Unfortunately, the ADOX help documentation is among Microsoft’s worst, which is saying a ...