Using VBA To Access Information In SQL

I need to compare data on a spreadsheet to data that resides in SQL database. I have never done this before so before I start I wanted to ask a general question, what is the cleanest, simplest, way to go about this. I read that ADO is a good way to access SQL. I understand that ADO is one of the main components of MS universal data access specifications so it sounds like the right approach (and that ADO is replacing DAO).

In terms of application, all I want to do for now is pull data from SQL and write it to a worksheet in the Excel workbook. Other macro's will then operate on this data. Later I will want to write data back to SQL but I want to focus on the "get" part first. Are the statements SELECT; INSERT; UPDATE; DELETE examples of ADO coding?

Conceptually, the SQL team provide nightly tables of data; ADO retrieves some of that data by selecting it; The selected data is written to a worksheet within the workbook. Is this a good approach?