Professional ASP Data Access Author:James De Carli, Richard Anderson, Simon Robinson, Charles Fairchild, Simon Robinson, Thearon Willis, Charles Fairchild, Joshua Parkin, Dino Esposito, Ulrich Schwanitz, Jason Hales, Kent Tegels, John Granade 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 ... more »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.« less