This chapter provides a brief overview of object linking and embedding (OLE). The following chapters explain elements of this chapter in greater detail; it is recommended that this chapter be read before any other chapters.
The contents of this chapter are split into two parts. The first part explains OLE from the point of view of the user; the second part gives a brief technical overview of how OLE works.
The first part of this chapter starts out with a discussion of what OLE is and the benefits it provides to a user, followed by a detailed comparison and explanation of linking and embedding, from the user's point of view. Then client and server applications are introduced, including the operations that a server can perform on an object in a document of a client application. The second part describes how client and server applications communicate, along with a brief explanation of the special functions and structures that the developer must use. Finally there is a brief discussion of the system registration database, which is used by OLE to determine which objects are related to a particular OLE server application.