Mike,
in general I prefer an API to automating a html page / html form and parse the result page, as an API is intended for progrmmatic usage.
Google has many functionalities and they didn't choose a single API mechanism, it's very individual what service you use. In another recent thread serpico gave a start about using google maps, you might take a look at that.
As your main concernt is remote data access the better match would not be to attach to such APIs or web services, but to a remote database, eg MySQL or SQL Server. This rather is done via the corresponding ODBC or OLEDB driver and a connection string towars a remote database.
What you try to use with adwords is not remote database access, it's a service/functionality on top of a remote database, the API call via a http request to
is surely a remote internet based access, but you attach on the level of a server processing requests which in itself does database access, but you don't attach to the remote database directly.
So an API, an application programming interface, does not give you access to a database, it provides methods you can call.
To learn remote database access you could start with a locally installed MS SQL Express and then use cursoradapter or remote views. This is already called remote, as it's not DBFs. The usual meaning of remote, being on a remote computer, typically in the internet and even not in a LAN or WAN or attached to a LAN via a VPN connection is done exactly the same way as to a local SQL Server, it's just the server needs to allow remote connections and the connection process typically does then expect user credentials to authenticate the remote connection. Everything else works like with a local SQL Express or MySQL installation, so you can learn that without any remote database or webservice or api.
It's not wrong to try google adwords or other internet apis, twitter would be another example, but it's not remote database access in the pure meaning of the term.
Bye, Olaf.
Bye, Olaf.