OLE automation routine design

Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) automation is part of the OLE 2.0 architecture from Microsoft Corporation. With OLE automation, your applications, regardless of the language in which they are written, can expose their properties and methods in OLE automation objects. Other applications, such as Lotus Notes® or Microsoft Exchange, can then integrate these objects by taking advantage of these properties and methods through OLE automation.

The applications exposing the properties and methods are called OLE automation servers or objects, and the applications that access those properties and methods are called OLE automation controllers. OLE automation servers are COM components (objects) that implement the OLE IDispatch interface. An OLE automation controller is a COM client that communicates with the automation server through its IDispatch interface. COM is the foundation of OLE. For OLE automation routines, DB2® acts as an OLE automation controller. Through this mechanism, DB2 can invoke methods of OLE automation objects as external routines.

Note that all OLE automation topics assume that you are familiar with OLE automation terms and concepts. For an overview of OLE automation, refer to Microsoft Corporation: The Component Object Model Specification, October 1995. For details on OLE automation, refer to OLE Automation Programmer's Reference, Microsoft Press, 1996, ISBN 1-55615-851-3.