I was reading "The XML Files" on MSDN magazine (Sep/2001, page 31) and they say:

"[...]it seems obvious that OLE DB would never become a true universal standard for exposing information because it faced competition from other vendors. Since OLE DB is a COM technology and COM itself never became universally supported across platforms, it never really stood a chance."

Boy this is certainly a surprise to me. MS is openly disaccrediting their own stuff, that "incredible and powerful" technology that they advertised and pushed so much just a few years ago.

The new technology to replace OLE DB accorgind to this article is, of course, XML.

I wonder what MS will say about .NET a few years from now...