Glossary Of Terms

This section defines common terms necessary to understand the content of this document.

Component  - In Microsoft Windows programming, a component is a reusable program building block that can be combined with other components in the same or other computers in a distributed network to form an application.

Dynamic Link Library (DLL)  - Dynamic Link Libraries (DLLs) are software files that provide a specific set of functions that may be used by a number of applications. Since they typically contain a number of functions or procedures that are common to several applications, they save disk space by eliminating redundancy within an executable, and can also share memory when several running applications use the same DLL, thus reducing memory requirements. When several running applications need to use a DLL, they can share a single loaded DLL rather than loading a copy of the same file repeatedly.

OLE Control extension (OCX)  - An OCX is custom control, a special-purpose program that can be created for use by applications running on Microsoft's Windows systems. OCX' provide such functions as handling scroll bar movement and window resizing. Microsoft now calls an OCX an ActiveX control. An OCX or ActiveX control is actually implemented as a Dynamic Link Library.

Initialization Files (INI)  - Initialization files are files that are used to provide information to one or more application(s).

Virtual Device Drivers (*.VXD, *.386)  - In Windows operating systems, a virtual device driver is a program for each of the computer's main hardware devices, including the hard disk drive controller, keyboard, and serial and parallel ports. They're used to maintain the status of a hardware device that has changeable settings. Virtual device drivers handle software interrupts from the operating system rather than hardware interrupts.

Windows File Protection (WFP)  - Windows File Protection is a feature of Windows 2000 that prevents the replacement of essential system files. WFP runs as a background process on Windows 2000 and monitors protected files which include most Windows 2000 .SYS, .DLL, .EXE and .OCX files. When WFP detects that a protected file has been changed, it restores the original.