The Recordset Object

Let's recall the players in the ADO 2.5 object model again:

So far, of the main ADO objects, we've looked only at the Connection object and how it represents a real connection between the (ASP) application and the data store. Of course, if information is to pass between two places (such as an ASP page and a data store), then there needs to be a connection between them – and the ADO Connection object is a representation of that connection which we can use in our code.

But how do we manage the data, once we've got it from the data store into our page? Happily, it's organized into a fashion that reflects its original format in the data store, and that is relatively easy and intuitive to work with. In our code, we can manipulate the data through another of the main ADO objects – we can use a Recordset object.

As you can see, the Recordset object sits right in the middle of our ADO object diagram – which reflects the fact that it is probably the most heavily used ADO object in code. After all, it represents the data that we're working with – which is, in a sense, the raison d'être of ADO.