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Creating a Registration File

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Before an application can use OLE and Automation, the OLE objects must be registered with the user's system registration database. OLE provides sample registration files to perform this task for the OLE objects and the sample applications. Registration makes the following possible:

  • ActiveX clients can create instances of the objects through CoCreateInstance.

  • Automation tools can find the type libraries that are installed on the user's computer.

  • OLE can find remoting code for the interfaces.

You can use the DLLRegisterServer function to register all objects implemented by a dynamic-link library (DLL). This function registers the class identifiers (CLSIDs) for each object, the programmatic identifiers (ProgIDs) for each application, and the type library. For details, refer to the description of DLLRegisterServer.

In this section

Topic Description
Registering the Application
 Registration maps the ProgID of the application to a unique CLSID, so that you can create instances of the application by name, rather than by CLSID.
Registering Classes
 Objects that can be created with CoCreateInstance must also be registered with the system.