Using ADO for Internet Publishing
The OLE DB Provider for Internet Publishing shows a specific example of accessing heterogeneous data with ADO. Although the examples in this section will be specific to using the Internet Publishing Provider, the principles demonstrated should be similar when using ADO with other providers to heterogeneous data, such as a provider to an e-mail store.
URLs
Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) can be used as an alternative to connection strings and command text to specify data sources and the location of files and directories. You can use URLs with the existing Connection and Recordset objects and with the Record and Stream objects.
For more information about how to use URLs, see Absolute and Relative URLs.
Record Fields
The distinguishing difference between heterogeneous data and homogeneous data is that for the former, each row of data, or Record, can have a different set of columns, or Fields. For homogeneous data, each row has the same set of columns. For more information about the fields specific to the Internet Publishing Provider, see Records and Provider-Supplied Extra Fields.
Appending New Fields
Several ADO objects have been enhanced to work together with Record and Stream objects.
The Fields collection Append method, which creates and adds a Field object to the collection, can also specify the value of the Field.
The Update method finalizes the addition or deletion of fields to the collection.
As a shortcut and alternative to the Append method, you can create fields by assigning a value to an undefined or previously deleted field.
This section contains the following topics.