Differences Between the Mini- and Full-OLE Servers

• Microsoft Windows operating system versions 3.1, 3.11

SUMMARY

This article describes the differences and similarities between mini and full OLE servers.

MORE INFORMATION

An OLE server, also referred to as source application, is responsible for providing and manipulating the data component. Servers can either be mini servers or full servers. Both mini and full servers support embedded components; however, only full servers support both embedding and linking.

Mini servers appear more like a dialog box, and in some cases there is no distinction. Usually, they are applications that can only be launched from a host application, and will display an error message if started from File Manager or Program Manager. Mini servers only support embedded components (and not linked components) because they don't have the ability to save files to disk. Examples of mini servers are Microsoft WordArt, Microsoft Note-It, and Microsoft Draw.

Full servers are stand-alone applications with a full compliment of menus and functions. Although they support OLE functions, they don't need a host application to run. Full servers may be either single document interface (SDI) applications that only allow one document to be opened at a time, such as Paintbrush, or multiple document interface applications (MDI) that allow editing of multiple documents at a time, such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word for Windows.