In this chapter, you'll get familiar with the core of Object Linking and Embedding (OLE). You'll learn how an embedded component talks to its container. This is knowledge you'll need to use ActiveX controls, in-place activation (Visual Editing), and linking, all of which are described in Adam Denning's ActiveX Controls Inside Out (Microsoft Press, 1997), Kraig Brockschmidt's Inside OLE, 2d ed. (Microsoft Press, 1995), and other books.
You'll get started with a Microsoft Foundation Class mini-server, an out-of-process OLE component program that supports in-place activation but can't run as a stand-alone program. Running this component will give you a good idea of what OLE looks like to the user, in case you don't know already. You'll also see the extensive MFC support for this kind of application. If you work at only the top MFC level, however, you won't appreciate or understand the underlying OLE mechanisms. For that, you'll have to dig deeper. Shepherd and Wingo's MFC Internals (Addison-Wesley, 1996) provides extensive coverage of the internal workings of MFC's OLE Document support.
Next you'll build a container program that uses the familiar parts of the MFC library but supports embedded OLE objects that can be edited in their own windows. This container can, of course, run your MFC mini-server, but you'll really start to learn OLE when you build a mini-server from scratch and watch the interactions between it and the container.