[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]
Shell Shortcuts, available in the Windows Explorer and through the IShellLink interface, provide a higher-level mechanism for maintaining links between clients and sources. In Windows NT 5.0, shell shortcuts are implemented to use the capabilities of the link tracking service. That is, shell shortcuts already had the ability to search for moved link sources, but they are more likely to succeed in Windows NT 5.0 because of the link-tracking services. It is not necessary to treat shell shortcuts any differently to achieve this improved capability.
It is not always possible for the link-tracking services to find a moved link source. For example, the link source may have been moved to a non-NTFS 5.0 volume. In this event, the shell shortcut will search for the link source using the heuristic search algorithm described earlier. Therefore, if a shell shortcut on a Windows NT 4.0 system could have found a moved link source, the shortcut on a Windows NT 5.0 system will still be able to find it (subject to time constraints), and is likely to find it much more quickly. But a shortcut on an Windows NT 5.0 system is also able to find moved link sources which could not have previously been found on a Windows NT 4.0 system.
OLE links, available in applications such as Microsoft® Word and through the IOleLink interface, provide a higher-level mechanism for maintaining links between clients and sources. Since OLE links were previously already implemented using shell shortcuts, they too are more likely to succeed in finding link sources now because of the link-tracking services. Again, it is not necessary to treat OLE links any differently to achieve this improved result.