This book is divided into three parts:
Chapter 1, "Overview of Automation," introduces the basic concepts of Automation and identifies the components.
Chapter 2, "Exposing ActiveX Objects," shows how to write and expose programmable objects for use by ActiveX clients, and demonstrates programming techniques with sample code.
Chapter 3, "Accessing ActiveX Objects," explains how to write applications and programming tools that access exposed objects.
Chapter 4, "Standard Objects and Naming Guidelines," lists the standard ActiveX objects that are recommended for most applications, and describes naming conventions for objects.
Chapter 5, "Dispatch Interface and API Functions," describes the interfaces and functions that support access to exposed objects.
Chapter 6, "Data Types, Structures, and Enumerations," describes functions that manipulate arrays, strings, and variant types of data within Automation.
Chapter 7, "Conversion and Manipulation Functions," describes Automation API functions.
Chapter 8, "Type Libraries and the Object Description Language," describes the Microsoft Interface Definition Language (MIDL) compiler and the MkTypLib tool and its source file language. MIDL and MkTypLib creates type libraries according to the descriptions you provide.
Chapter 9, "Type Description Interfaces," describes the interfaces and functions that allow programs to read and bind to the descriptions of objects in a type library.
Chapter 10, "Type Building Interfaces," describes interfaces and functions that build type libraries.
Chapter 11, "Error Handling Interfaces," describes how Automation error handling interfaces define and return error information.
Appendix A, "National Language Support Functions," describes functions for 32-bit and 16-bit systems that support multiple national languages.
Appendix B, "File Requirements," lists the files you and your customers need to run Automation applications.
Appendix C, "Information for Visual Basic Programmers," lists the Automation APIs that are called by Visual Basic statements.
Appendix D, "String Comparisons," describes the string comparison rules applied by Automation.
Appendix E, "Managing GUIDs," provides supplemental information on globally unique identifiers.
The Glossary defines some of the terms that are useful in understanding Automation.