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OLE provides great benefits to both users and developers. OLE is the foundation of a new model of computing, which is more "document-centric" and less "application-centric." Users can focus on the data needed to create their compound documents rather than on the applications responsible for the data. As the user focuses on a particular data object, the tools needed to interact with that object become available directly within the document. Data objects can be transferred within and across documents without the loss of functionality. Documents can share data so that one copy of an object can serve many users. Users can therefore be more productive and manipulate information in a manner that is much more intuitive.
The use of OLE objects and interfaces provides developers with the tools they need to create flexible applications that can be easily maintained and enhanced. OLE applications can specialize in one area, taking advantage of features implemented in other OLE applications to increase their usability.
Since all interfaces are derived from one base interface, applications can learn at runtime about the capabilities of other applications that relate to object services. Through this dynamic binding, an application need not know anything about the objects it will use at run time. Support for additional objects and interfaces can be added without affecting either the current application or those applications that interact with it. Because the use of interfaces allows applications to access objects as black boxes, changes to an object's member functions do not affect the code accessing them.
The extendibility that OLE provides will continue to benefit the developer as the computing environment moves more toward an object-oriented design. The OLE architecture provides a first step in presenting applications as a collection of independently installable components.
Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) is a mechanism that allows applications to inter-operate more effectively, thereby allowing users to work more productively. End users of OLE container applications create and manage compound documents. Compound documents in this context do not necessarily refer to word processing documents. A compound document could be any container of objects such as a database containing word processing document (object) stored in the database, or a presentation containing financial forecasts which is an object from a spreadsheet.
Therefore, a compound document refers to a container holding objects that were created using another application. These are the documents that seamlessly incorporate data, or objects, of different formats. Sound clips, spreadsheets, text, and bitmaps are some examples of objects commonly found in compound documents. Each object is created and maintained by its object application, but through OLE, the services of the different object applications are integrated. End users feel as if a single application, with all the functionality of each of the object applications, is being used. End users of OLE applications don't need to be concerned with managing and switching between the various object applications; they focus solely on the compound document and the task being performed.
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