How to use CDaoDatabase?

There are many ways to use the CDao* classes. If you only want to read some fields from one or more tables, you can omit the creation of special derived classes to access them:

CDaoDatabase db;
try
{
    // Open access file: non-exclusive, read only
    // When db is password protected, pass "PWD=password" as 4th argument
    db.Open(lpszFileName, FALSE, TRUE);
    // Open a table
    CDaoTableDef TableDef(&db);
    TableDef.Open(lpszTableName);
    // Step through all recordsets in the table and get
    //  the value for a specific field
    CDaoRecordset rc;
    rc.Open(&TableDef);
    if (rc.IsOpen())
    {
        if (!rc.IsBOF())
        {
            while (!rc.IsEOF())
            {
                // Get the content of the field
                COleVariant var;
                rc.GetFieldValue(lpszFieldName, var);
                // print content if a string or integer 
                if (VT_BSTR == var.vt)
                {
                    CString str = V_BSTR(&var);
                    _tprintf(_T("%s = %s\n"), lpszFieldName, str.GetString());
                }
                else if (VT_I4 == var.vt)
                    _tprintf(_T("%s = %d\n"), lpszFieldName, var.lVal);
                rc.MoveNext();
            }
        }
        rc.Close();
    }
    if (TableDef.IsOpen())
        TableDef.Close();

    // Execute a SQL command
    CString str;
    str.Format(_T("SELECT * FROM [%s]"), lpszTableName);
    CDaoRecordset rc1(&db);
    rc1.Open(dbOpenDynaset, str.GetString());
    if (rc1.IsOpen())
    {
        // step through the recordsets like in the above code
        //  and access fields by name or index
        rc1.Close();
    }
}
catch (CDaoException * pe)
{
    // handle errors here
    pe->Delete();
}
if (db.IsOpen())
    db.Close();

As you can see, the main work is performed using the CDaoRecordset class. Pass a pointer to your database to the constructor when executing SQL commands with the Open() function or pass a pointer to a table or query definition when opening these. Then step through the recordsets using the Move...() functions and retrieve (or set) fields by accessing them by their name or index.

Before proceeding you should also read about the VARIANT type and the MFC COleVariant encapsulation.

I would try Googling for[^] that.