For developers, it brought OLE Control eXtension ( OCX ), a way to develop and use custom user interface elements.

In particular, any container that supported OLE 2. 0 could already embed OLE custom controls, although these controls cannot react to events unless the container supports this.

OLE custom controls are usually shipped in the form of a dynamic link library with the. ocx extension.

This started out with Dynamic Data Exchange ( DDE ), which was superseded by Object Linking and Embedding ( OLE ) and later by the Component Object Model ( COM ), Automation Objects, ActiveX controls, and the. NET Framework.

Visual Basic 4. 0 added support for the newer OLE Controls or OCXs ( which became ActiveX controls ), implicitly deprecating VBX controls.

It added Doc / View support, VBX controls, OLE.

The COM support in Microsoft Visual C ++ allows developers to create a variety of COM objects, OLE Automation servers, and ActiveX controls.

* Office Web Components, a group of OLE components implemented as ActiveX controls in Microsoft Office 2000, Office XP and Office 2003

It has been continually developed over the years with many functions added along with support for things like ActiveX controls, COM ( OLE ), Unicode, UAC and code signing for Vista and Windows 7 etc.

A version that worked with Microsoft OLE was also available called D ' OLE, allowing distributed code written using PDO on any platform to be presented on Microsoft systems as if they were local OLE objects.

Microsoft was evolving OLE into the Component Object Model ( COM ) and a similar distributed version called DCOM, IBM had their System Object Model ( SOM / DSOM ), Sun Microsystems was promoting their Distributed Objects Everywhere, and there were a host of smaller players as well.

New features were OLE automation, drag-and-drop, in-place activation and structured storage.

Monikers evolved from OLE 1 object names, and provided an hierarchical object and resource naming system similar to URLs or URIs, which were independently invented.

In order to obtain a Windows 95 compliance logo from Microsoft, one had to meet certain interoperability tests which were quite difficult to meet without adoption of OLE technology, even though the technology was largely only useful in integrating with Microsoft Office.

Other important features included with this release were the Crypto API, Telephony API 2. 0 with limited Unimodem support, which was the first release of TAPI on Windows NT, DCOM and new OLE features, and Microsoft Transaction Server for network applications, Microsoft Message Queuing ( MSMQ ), which improved interprocess communication, Winsock 2 and the TCP / IP stack improvements, and file system defragmentation support.

OLE and OLE Automation were more advanced, but proved to be bulky and difficult to code.

Beginning with this version of MDAC, Microsoft Jet, Microsoft Jet OLE DB Provider, and the ODBC Desktop Database Drivers were not included.

The first real standard API was OLE DB for OLAP specification from Microsoft which appeared in 1997 and introduced the MDX query language.

MDX was first introduced as part of the OLE DB for OLAP specification in 1997 from Microsoft.

Microsoft originally intended OLE DB as a higher-level replacement for, and successor to, ODBC, extending its feature set to support a wider variety of non-relational databases, such as object databases and spreadsheets that do not necessarily implement SQL.

In a Record object, a Field can be an absolute or relative URL that points into a tree-structured namespace ( used for semi-structured data providers like the Microsoft OLE DB Provider for Internet Publishing ) or as a reference to the default Stream object associated with that Record object.

As some data stores have different methods of establishing a connection, some methods may not be supported in the connection object for particular OLE DB providers.

:* an OLE DB provider ( for example SQLOLEDB ), using the syntax " provider =";

Recently, OLE for process control ( OPC ) has become a widely accepted solution for intercommunicating different hardware and software, allowing communication even between devices originally not intended to be part of an industrial network.

* OLE for Process Control

* National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Office for Law Enforcement, often abbreviated NOAA OLE

OLE 1. 0, released in 1990, was the evolution of the original dynamic data exchange, or DDE, concepts that Microsoft developed for earlier versions of Windows.

OLE 1. 0 later evolved to become an architecture for software components known as the Component Object Model ( COM ), and later DCOM.

: Arguably the most important interface for an OLE object.

Microsoft initially announced that applications using OpenDoc would be deemed compatible with OLE, and would receive certification for Windows 95.

Use of Microsoft Object Linking and Embedding ( OLE ) objects limits the interoperability, because these objects are not widely supported in programs for viewing or editing files ( e. g. embedding of other files inside the file, such as tables or charts from a spreadsheet application in a text document or presentation file ).

* OLE for process control

: Dynamically linkable libraries usually have the suffix, although other file name extensions may be used for specific purpose dynamically linked libraries, e. g. for OLE libraries.

Microsoft provides an OLE DB-ODBC bridge for simplifying development in COM aware languages ( i. e. Visual Basic ).

* OLE for process control

OpenDoc was initially created by Apple Computer in 1992 after Microsoft approached Apple asking for input on a proposed OLE II project.

Mark Ericson from WordPerfect provided the vision for a port to Windows that included seamless interoperability between OpenDoc and OLE.

OPOS ( OLE for POS ) was the first commonly adopted standard and was created by Microsoft, NCR Corporation, Epson and Fujitsu-ICL.

The introduction of Microsoft at the desktop and server layers resulted in the development of technologies such as OLE for process control ( OPC ), which is now a de facto industry connectivity standard.

According to a related Microsoft FAQ, " Providers like ADO. Net which can run on top of OLE DB will not support OLE DB once the latter is deprecated ", but the same answer in the FAQ states that the original post relates only to the OLE DB provider for SQL Server, so the position of OLE DB itself remains unclear.

There have been several deprecated components as well, such as the Microsoft Jet Database Engine, MSDASQL ( the OLE DB provider for ODBC ), and Remote Data Services ( RDS ).