ADO: ActiveX Data Objects

Accessing ADO with VBScript

ActiveX Data Objects can be accessed from within server-side scripts via Active Server Pages, better known as ASP (which in this case does not stand for Application Service Provider). Although this book does not go into ASP in detail,^[2] a brief explanation of the technology is needed to understand how to develop VBScript code that uses ActiveX Data Objects.

When a client requests an ASP (Active Server Page) from a server, the ASP is “executed” before it is sent to the calling client. If there are any scripts embedded within the Active Server Page, they are executed. The result of this execution of different scripts is a static HTML page that can be viewed by virtually any web browser.

Active X Data Objects therefore can be embedded within a server-side script in order to gather and display information for the client in a low-resource-intensive manner. Because the ADO code is run on a server, the HTML page contains only the result, not the code. Once the page has been dynamically created by the server, it is passed back to the client for static reading. Because the web server does not pass actual recordsets, or rows of data, the potential savings in bandwidth can be considerable.

Referencing ActiveX Data Objects

In order to use ActiveX Data Objects from within your server-side scripts, your server must be running IIS (Internet Information Server) Version 3.0 or better. Along with IIS, you must of course have installed ADO, which is part of the MDAC installation. ...