Should I Learn DAO, ADO or ADO.NET ?

[Barclay]

Hello Microsoft MVPs, learned programmers, and other VBA newbies,

I am teaching myself VBA using Access 2007 Visual Basic Editor. I am
confused about which tools I should be learning to access the records in my
database. I have read that DAO is native and fastest, but also that DAO is
obsolete and anything new should be written using ADO.Net Is ADO.Net
supported under Access 2007 VBA Editor? What about Access 2003?

Does each set of tools have certain situations where it is best suited? If
so, what are those situations?

Should I learn:
1) DAO
2) ADO
3) ADO.Net

Thank you for being so generous with your knowledge and being willing to
share it and your time with all of us newbies out there.

Thank you,
Barclay

 

[Arvin Meyer [MVP]]

If you are learning VBA, you can only use DAO or ADO. DAO is not obsolete
for JET databases, except perhaps in the minds of developers who don't use
Access. Most Access developers use DAO, and many of them use it exclusively.

It is ADO, which is obsolete, having been replaced by ADO.NET for web
applications. Since new functionality in ADPs has been suspended, I'd
suggest staying with DAO, at least for the next 5 or 6 years that we know it
will be supported. If you are using ADPs with SQL-Server, ADO will still be
the method of necessity.

If you explore them all, you'll find that DAO has a far richer set of
functionality for the JET database engine than any other language.

 

[Barclay]

Thanks Arvin! Now I can throw myself into learning DAO without hesitation
that it may not be best set of tools to be learning.