OLE DB is the latest Microsoft data access mechanism, superseding Data Access Objects (DAO). While DAO is quite adequate for many programmers' needs, if you earn your bread and butter doing database type work with Microsoft languages, you really need to be looking seriously at OLE DB.

The book is subtitled

Programmer's Reference and Software Development Kit and that is exactly what you get. The SDK CD contains various material, including libraries, C and Assembler include files, online references and documentation, sample projects, sample OLE DB Providers, a suite of test tools for testing OLE DB providers, some sample ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) and more. There are separate versions of the SDK for Intel, PowerPC and Alpha.

The book forms a substantial reference to supplement the material on the CD. It is divided into three sections, Introduction to OLE DB, OLE DB Reference and Appendices. The title of the first section, Introduction to OLE DB, is something of an understatement, because it contains fourteen chapters and covers 180-odd pages. It starts with a fairly good overview, then continues with considerable detail about the nitty gritty of OLE DB programming with separate chapters on Commands, Rowsets, Getting and Setting Data, BLOBs and OLE Objects, Indexes, Data Types, Properties, Transactions, Errors and general programming considerations.

The second section is the major reference material with minute detail of all the COM interfaces and methods that make up the OLE DB system 96 and there are A LOT! The third section consists of a number of Appendices giving supplementary details on such things as data types, schema rowsets and properties as well as a summary of the interfaces.

This is a comprehensive book and reasonably well written and presented. Combine that with the fact that it is the definitive reference and it is a must-have purchase for anyone involved in OLE DB. Well worth having.