Abstract: The present invention comprises a method and system for accessing the contents of a database from an OLE enabled user application without requiring the database to be open on the users desktop or requiring the user to know a text based data manipulation language. That is, using OLE's drag and drop methodology, a user may search the contents of a database to generate a result set of rows from the database and utilize information content from the resulting rows as desired. An OLE enabled user application is opened on a user's computer. The user then selects the location of a database to be accessed using a dialogue. Once the desired database is located, a “palette” is created at a portion of the screen of the user's computer. Once the palette is created, the user then searches and accesses the contents of the database by using drag and drop gestures in conjunction with the OLE enabled user application and the established palette.