I always have considered ODBC as a low level API to databases. The slowness that I experienced was by the "blocking" API calls. i.e. poorly written code....

By using ADO you get some performance enhancements, even if the ADO connection goes through OLE DB and that goes through ODBC.

One performance enhancement I can think of is Persistant connections. That is a thing you've wont get with a native MSSQL driver!

Janne