A database is a list or a group of lists of objects organized to make the list(s) and its (their) values easy to create and manage. In the computer world, this suggests, rightly, that the list(s) and its(their) values are stored in a machine. As information becomes of high importance, almost every company keeps some type of database, whether it includes its employees, its customers, or the products it sells.

To make it possible to create computer databases, throughout its history, Microsoft developed various libraries and programming environments. Microsoft JET is a library used to create and manage Microsoft Access types of databases using a language or a programming environment of your choice. This means that the library can be used from either Microsoft Access, another Microsoft development studio, or an environment from another company. To make this possible, you must first obtain the library. In most cases, you should have this library already installed in your computer. If not, it is freely available by downloading from the Microsoft web site. Once there, simply do a search on "Microsoft JET". After downloading it, install it. 

Microsoft ActiveX Data Objects or ADO, is a library used to manage databases. To make it possible, it uses the driver that is part of Microsoft JET.

Microsoft ActiveX Data Object Extensions for Data Definition Language and Security abbreviated ADOX, is an addition to ADO. It can be used to create and manage a database, providing some of the same operations as ADO but also some operations not possible in ADO.

Any computer language or programming environment that wants to use Microsoft JET provides its own means of accessing the library. In fact, it is not usual to manually write code that takes advantage of Microsoft JET. This is usually how some programmers would create and manage a web database (through Active Server Pages (ASP)). Still, in most cases, and depending on the language you decide to use to create and manage your database, you would need either only an interpreter (which is the case if you plan to use VBScript, JavaScript, or another interpreted language) or a compiler.

With the release of Microsoft Visual Studio 2005, Microsoft provided a series of free programming environments. You can use one of these to create and manage your databases. In our lessons, we will use Microsoft Visual C++ Express. You can download it free from the Microsoft web site. Once there, do a search on Visual C# Express.

Based on its flexibility, you can use the .NET Framework to create and manage Microsoft JET databases. The .NET Framework is a group of many libraries under one name. When creating a project, you choose what libraries you would use, based on your goal, to perform the necessary tasks. If you are using a visual environment, you can "visually" reference the library.