I can understand your reservations.. one big issue with DAO is that it is obsolete (aka "very very unsupported"), and will not work on 64bit versions of Windows.

wolf99 makes a good point too.. DAO was originally designed purely for Access, so works well with the early versions. As time goes on, MS have moved away and made it work much better with ADO - as well as adding JRO (features for Access etc) to ADO.


In terms of MDAC, Windows XP includes MDAC 2.8 by default, so you often don't need to bother installing it.. it is only one file that needs to be installed anyway (tho that is an installation program in itself). There are apparently simple ways of integrating this into your own setup (for DB apps I've only had local users, so have done it manually).


ADO has many new features, and I have yet to find something that DAO has that ADO hasn't (it's just a matter of where to look - usually ADOX or JRO).

It is debatable if converting an existing program is worthwhile, but I would definitely do all new development in ADO.