The C++ language provides different types that can be used to represent values (for example, int, double, char*, and so on). Data Access can deal with data in a uniform way, independently of its type. It uses the IliValue class to represent data whose real type is not known at compile time. See Handling Values in Data Access.

The IliDatatype class defines objects that are used to represent the dynamic type of an IliValue object.

All communication between a Data Access program and a remote database system goes through the IliSQLSession and IliSQLCursor classes. These classes provide a high-level interface to all the database access functions needed by Data Access. They are themselves implemented with the Rogue Wave Views DB Link library. See Connecting to a Database.