DAO (Database Access Object) uses the Microsoft Jet Database Engine to access the database. Microsoft Jet provides a data engine with products such as Access and Visual Basic. Like ODBC, DAO provides a set of API for programming. The MFC also provides a set of DAO classes that encapsulate the underlying API, which greatly simplifies the development of procedures. With the MFC's DAO class, users can write applications independent of DBMS. It is introduced from Visual C 4.0. Generally speaking, the DAO class provides a broader support than ODBC classes. On the one hand, as long as there is an ODBC driver, use the Microsoft Jet DAO to access the ODBC data source. On the other hand, since the DAO is based on the Microsoft Jet engine, it has good performance when accessing the Access database (ie * .mdb file).
