ADO or ODBC Recommendations

[nospam]

Hello -

Anyone have any thoughts on which API to use - ADO or ODBC?

I have a fat client written in C++ using MFC ODBC classes to access a Jet
database.
The app is going to be modified to write to a SQL Server central database
with multiple users accessing their local copies of the database ( using
replication technology on the clients side).

Most of the performance benchmarks give an edge to ODBC over ADO when
writing to an Access database. Anyone know of any benchmarks for a c/s
environment?

I've seen references that ADO has some client side cursor features for
filters and sorting which are a benefit over ODBC. I'd also like to use
the asynchronous fetch that OLE DB provides and am not sure if this is
implemented in ODBC.

Thanks for the help.

Bruce

[Erland Sommarskog]

nospam (br*********@REMOVEspamREMOVE.earthlink.net) writes:

I have a fat client written in C++ using MFC ODBC classes to access a Jet
database.
The app is going to be modified to write to a SQL Server central database
with multiple users accessing their local copies of the database ( using
replication technology on the clients side).

Most of the performance benchmarks give an edge to ODBC over ADO when
writing to an Access database. Anyone know of any benchmarks for a c/s
environment?

I've seen references that ADO has some client side cursor features for
filters and sorting which are a benefit over ODBC. I'd also like to use
the asynchronous fetch that OLE DB provides and am not sure if this is
implemented in ODBC.

The two are not easily comparable, as they are interfaces on two different
levels. ODBC is more low level and gives you more control over what you
are doing, but requires to write more code. ADO is more high-level and
easier to use - as long as you use it the way it was intended.

As for performance, it depends a lot on how you use ADO. If you use
ADO with remote procedure calls, using adCmdStoredProcedure, client-
side cursors, and you construct all parameter arrays without using
the .Refresh method (which can be called implicitly if you are not
careful) I would not expect ADO to lag behind ODBC.

I should add that I have very little experience of ODBC programming
myself. My best client library is DB-Library, but I'm starting to
know ADO decently.

--
Erland Sommarskog, SQL Server MVP, so****@algonet.se

Books Online for SQL Server SP3 at
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/techinf...2000/books.asp