Much of ADO's power and flexibility is due to the fact that you can use it to connect to any of several different data providers and still expose the same programming model, regardless of the specific features of any given provider.
However, because each provider is unique, how your application interacts with ADO will vary slightly between different providers. The differences you need to be aware of usually fall into one of three categories:
Provider-specific details in each of these three areas are listed for each of the providers currently available from Microsoft, listed as follows.
| Area | Topic |
| ODBC databases | Microsoft OLE DB Provider for ODBC |
| Microsoft Index Server | Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Index Server |
| Microsoft Active Directory Service | Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Microsoft Active Directory Service |
Provider-Specific Dynamic Properties
The Properties collections of the Connection, Command, and Recordset objects include dynamic properties specific to the provider. These properties provide information about functionality specific to the provider beyond the built-in properties ADO supports.
After establishing the connection and creating these objects, use the Refresh method on the object's Properties collection to obtain the provider-specific properties. Refer to the provider documentation and the "OLE DB Programmer's Reference" for detailed information about these dynamic properties.
For more information about OLE DB providers, see the documentation for the Microsoft® OLE DB SDK or visit the Microsoft OLE DB Web page.
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