The dbGo components provide data access through the ADO framework. ADO, (Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects) is a set of COM objects that access data through an OLE DB provider. The dbGo components encapsulate these ADO objects in the Delphi database architecture. 

The ADO layer of an ADO-based application consists of Microsoft ADO 2.1, an OLE DB provider or ODBC driver for the data store access, client software for the specific database system used (in the case of SQL databases), a database back-end system accessible to the application (for SQL database systems), and a database. All of these must be accessible to the ADO-based application for it to be fully functional. 

The ADO objects that figure most prominently are the Connection, Command, and Recordset objects. These ADO objects are wrapped by the TADOConnection, TADOCommand, and ADO dataset components. The ADO framework includes other "helper" objects, like the Field and Properties objects, but these are typically not used directly in dbGo applications and are not wrapped by dedicated components. 

Before reading about the features peculiar to the dbGo components, you should familiarize yourself with the common features of database connection components and datasets. 

The following topics describe the unique features of dbGo components and how to work with them:

• Overview of ADO components
• Connecting to ADO data stores
• Using TADODataSet
• Using Command Objects