A lot of acronyms are tossed around that relate to ADO. Knowing what all the acronyms mean and figuring out how they fit together can be confusing. The following general definitions will give you an understanding of several basic terms.
ADO
Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) is a set of components based on COM. The objects provide an interface between program and scripting languages and OLE DB. ADO provides access to various data sources in a uniform way. ADO tends to be used most commonly in non-.NET languages such as VBScript.
ADO MD
Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects, Multi-Dimensional (ADO MD) is an extension to ADO that provides additional objects related to multidimensional data sources such as SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS) cubes. ADO MD is often used by languages such as Visual Basic (VB), Visual C++, and Visual J++ to browse schemas and retrieve data. . . .
