As companies around the world are jumping on the Web to do everything from advertising to e-commerce, client/server developers are frantically searching for technologies that will let them open Web windows within their existing information systems. Enter Microsoft Remote Data Services (RDS), a set of COM objects born from the ashes of Advanced Data Connector (ADC) and now part of Microsoft Data Access Components (MDAC) 2.0 and later. (See the sidebar "Making Sure MDAC Works," page 48, for information about MDAC setup and repair.)

RDS...