INFO: Database Components to Distribute with ADO, ODBC, OLEDB or an RDS Application

For your Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), ODBC, OLE DB or Remote Data Services (RDS) applications to work properly you must distribute Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) with your application. This article discusses Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) redistribution options.

Mircosoft provides a redistributable installation package for you to include with your application. You can obtain the latest redistribution of MDAC from the following Web site: Detailed instructions and Frequently Asked Questions are also provided at the Web site. Please note that starting from MDAC 2.0, the redistribution file is always named as Mdac_typ.exe. From MDAC 2.1 Service Pack 2 (SP2) and higher, our target is to have a release manifesto for each Web release version. MDAC contains several ODBC drivers and OLE DB providers. Refer to the preceding Web site for information about the particular version that you download. A piece meal or partial installation of MDAC is not supported because there are numerous interdependencies between the components. System instability can result from an installation that does not include all the components.

Installation through a .cab file is also not supported. Please refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base article for further details: Microsoft Windows 2000 and higher operating systems are preloaded with MDAC. You do not need to ship MDAC with your product if you are targeting Windows 2000 exclusively. Although, you can install a more recent version of the MDAC downloadable files from the following Web site: If MDAC is shipped with your application, before you install MDAC on the system, first shut down all applications. Or, warn the users to close all applications. A careless installation of MDAC can lead to disastrous results. If you are faced with a bad installation of MDAC, refer to the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles: To know exactly what components are shipped with MDAC, refer to the MDAC release manifesto or read one of the following Microsoft Knowledge Base articles for MDAC 2.1 and higher: