Professional ASP Data Access

With the advent of Universal Data Access from Microsoft, we see data being stored in a variety of places - mail systems, directory services, Internet services and so on. To build great Web applications you need to drive your site with data, in whatever form it takes. This means data access and manipulation on the server to bring dynamic content to the end user. A well-constructed site will not only access data, but also manage it efficiently. This is imperative to ensure users perceive the site well and that it scales to cope with increased numbers of users.

Active Server Pages, together with ADO and OLEDB, can bring about this access to a myriad of data stores. Existing data access technologies have concentrated on relational databases, but ADO now brings the benefits of semi-structured data. So not only can you provide fast access to existing stores of data, but you can also access data in a less structured form, such as mail messages, web pages, XML and so on.

James De Carli is an Associate Director with Imperium Solutions, a Connecticut-based Microsoft Solution Provider Partner where he specializes in the design and development of custom internet and client/server database systems.

Rama Ramachandran is the Director-Technology with Imperium Solutions, a Microsoft Solution Provider Partner. He is a Microsoft Certified Solution Developer who designs and develops custom web and desktop database applications. He has been developing using Visual Basic, Visual InterDev/ASP, Access, SQL Server and FoxPro. Rama has contributed numerous articles to Visual Basic Programmer's Journal and is the co-author of four Visual Basic books. Rama also teaches Visual Basic at the Fairfield University, CT and Web Application Design at University of CT, Stamford.