Architecture
The latest version of MDAC (2.8) consists of several interacting components, all of which are Windows specific except for ODBC (which is available on several platforms). MDAC architecture may be viewed as three layers: a programming interface layer, consisting of ADO and ADO.NET, a database access layer developed by database vendors such as Oracle and Microsoft (OLE DB, .NET managed providers and ODBC drivers), and the database itself. These component layers are all made available to applications through the MDAC API. The Microsoft SQL Server Network Library, a proprietary access method specific to Microsoft SQL Server, is also included in the MDAC. Developers of Windows applications are encouraged to use ADO or ADO.NET for data access, the benefit being that users of the application program are not constrained in their choice of database architecture except that it should be supported by MDAC. Naturally, developers still have the choice of writing applications which directly access OLE DB and ODBC.
Read more about this topic: Microsoft Data Access Components
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