ADO: ActiveX Data Objects

The Record Object

The Record object is used to navigate hierarchical data sources, such as a file directory. Think of a file directory as a tree with nodes. The Record object can represent any node within that tree -- either a leaf node (a file), or a nonleaf node (a directory).

As a leaf node, the Record object contains information about a file or document. The properties of the file or document are accessed through the Record object’s Fields collection. The contents of the file or document is accessed through the default stream for the Record Object (covered later in this chapter under Section 10.2.1.2.

As a nonleaf node, the Record object contains information about a directory, which may contain other files and directories. As such, the Record object will provide information about the directory through its Fields collection. The files and directories belonging to the directory represented by this Record object can be returned within a Recordset object, containing individual Record objects for each resource. I will discuss this later in this chapter (see Section 10.1.2.

Opening a Record Object

To begin working with a Record object, you first have to open it, of course. Following is the prototype for the Record.Open method:

record.Open [Source], _
            [ActiveConnection], _
            [Mode], _
            [CreateOptions], _
            [Options], _
            [UserName], _
            [Password]_

The Record object can be opened by passing one of five different items to the Source argument:

• A Command object

• A SQL statement

• A table name

• An open Recordset ...