A group of high-level functions has been provided to simplify and shorten the amount of code necessary to accomplish the usual message manipulation tasks. This group of functions is called Simplified Message Functions, and all the functions contain the word "Message" somewhere in their name. A list of these functions and the details of them can be found in Simplified Message Functions.
As previously mentioned, these functions are at a higher level than the base cryptographic functions or the low-level message functions. They wrap several of the base cryptographic, low-level message, and certificate functions into a single function that performs a specific task in a specific manner, such as encrypting a PKCS #7 message or signing a message. These functions provide a quick way to get started using the Microsoft® CryptoAPI by reducing the number of function calls that you must use to accomplish a task.
There are two categories of tasks that are presented in this chapter: