Huge list of file formats with detailed description. File type description. This file format extension list gives an overview about the huge amount of different file types available. Borland C Builder 6 Portable Skype' title='Borland C Builder 6 Portable Skype' />Open source software is booming here we round up over 480 open source applications for you to use or build upon. Feel free to add more apps in the comments. Internet Explorer formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE is a series of graphical web browsers. To get more detailed information about each file extension, please click on the links below. If you have troubles to view or edit a file you got, we offer the possibility to convert your file for free using our online media converter. Just give it a try and let us know if something is not working. Most files also contain some hidden meta data which can be examined using an online Metadata viewer. If you find any errors regarding the file description or would like to add another file type, please let us know. We extend the list constantly. Component Object Model Wikipedia. Component Object Model COM is a binary interface standard for software components introduced by Microsoft in 1. It is used to enable inter process communicationobject creation in a large range of programming languages. COM is the basis for several other Microsoft technologies and frameworks, including OLE, OLE Automation, Browser Helper Object, Active. X, COM, DCOM, the Windows shell, Direct. X, UMDF and Windows Runtime. The essence of COM is a language neutral way of implementing objects that can be used in environments different from the one in which they were created, even across machine boundaries. For well authored components, COM allows reuse of objects with no knowledge of their internal implementation, as it forces component implementers to provide well defined interfaces that are separated from the implementation. The different allocation semantics of languages are accommodated by making objects responsible for their own creation and destruction through reference counting. Borland C Builder 6 Portable Skype' title='Borland C Builder 6 Portable Skype' />Type conversion casting between different interfaces of an object is achieved through the Query. Interface method. The preferred method of inheritance within COM is the creation of sub objects to which method calls are delegated. COM is an interface technology defined and implemented as standard only on Microsoft Windows and Apples Core Foundation 1. API. 1 The latter only implements a subset of the whole COM interface. For some applications, COM has been replaced at least to some extent by the Microsoft. NET framework, and support for Web Services through the Windows Communication Foundation WCF. However, COM objects can be used with all. NET languages through. NET COM Interop. Networked DCOM uses binary proprietary formats, while WCF encourages the use of XML based SOAP messaging. COM is very similar to other component software interface technologies, such as CORBA and Java Beans, although each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Unlike C, COM provides a stable application binary interface ABI that does not change between compiler releases. This makes COM interfaces attractive for object oriented C libraries that are to be used by clients compiled using different compiler versions. HistoryeditOne of the first methods of interprocess communication in Windows was Dynamic Data Exchange DDE, first introduced in 1. Antony Williams involved in the creation of the COM architecture, later distributed two internal papers in Microsoft that embraced the concept of software components Object Architecture Dealing With the Unknown or Type Safety in a Dynamically Extensible Class Library in 1. On Inheritance What It Means and How To Use It in 1. These provided the foundation of many of the ideas behind COM. Object Linking and Embedding OLE, Microsofts first object based framework, was built on top of DDE and designed specifically for compound documents. It was introduced with Word for Windows and Excel in 1. Windows, starting with version 3. An example of a compound document is a spreadsheet embedded in a Word for Windows document as changes are made to the spreadsheet within Excel, they appear automatically inside the Word document. In 1. 99. 1, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic Extensions VBX with Visual Basic 1. A VBX is a packaged extension in the form of a dynamic link library DLL that allows objects to be graphically placed in a form and manipulated by properties and methods. These were later adapted for use by other languages such as Visual C. In 1. 99. 2, when version 3. Windows was released, Microsoft released OLE 2 with its underlying object model. The COM Application binary interface ABI was the same as the MAPI ABI, which was released in 1. While OLE 1 was focused on compound documents, COM and OLE 2 were designed to address software components in general. Text conversations and Windows messages had proved not to be flexible enough to allow sharing application features in a robust and extensible way, so COM was created as a new foundation, and OLE changed to OLE2. In 1. 99. 4 OLE custom controls OCXs were introduced as the successor to VBX controls. At the same time, Microsoft stated that OLE 2 would just be known as OLE, and that OLE was no longer an acronym, but a name for all of the companys component technologies. In early 1. 99. 6, Microsoft found a new use for OLE Custom Controls, expanding their Web browsers capability to present content, renamed some parts of OLE relating to the Internet Active. X, and gradually renamed all OLE technologies to Active. X, except the compound document technology that was used in Microsoft Office. Later that year, DCOM was introduced as an answer to CORBA. Related technologieseditCOM was the major software development platform for Windows and, as such, influenced development of a number of supporting technologies. In order for Microsoft to provide developers with support for distributed transactions, resource pooling, disconnected applications, event publication and subscription, better memory and processor thread management, as well as to position Windows as an alternative to other enterprise level operating systems, Microsoft introduced a technology called Microsoft Transaction Server MTS on Windows NT 4. With Windows 2. 00. COM was incorporated into the operating system as opposed to the series of external tools provided by MTS and renamed COM. At the same time, Microsoft de emphasized DCOM as a separate entity. Components that made use of COM services were handled more directly by the added layer of COM, in particular by operating system support for interception. In the first release of MTS, interception was tacked on installing an MTS component would modify the Windows Registry to call the MTS software, and not the component directly. Windows 2. 00. 0 also revised the Component Services control panel application used to configure COM components. An advantage of COM was that it could be run in component farms. Instances of a component, if coded properly, could be pooled and reused by new calls to its initializing routine without unloading it from memory. Components could also be distributed called from another machine. COM and Microsoft Visual Studio provided tools to make it easy to generate client side proxies, so although DCOM was used to make the remote call, it was easy to do for developers. COM also introduced a subscriberpublisher event mechanism called COM Events, and provided a new way of leveraging MSMQ inter application asynchronous messaging with components called Queued Components. COM events extend the COM programming model to support late bound see Late binding events or method calls between the publisher or subscriber and the event system. Microsoft. NET provides means both to provide component technology, and to interact with COM via COM interop assemblies. NET provides wrappers to most of the commonly used COM controls. Daz Content Installer. Microsoft. NET hides most detail from component creation and therefore eases development. NET can leverage COM via the System. Enterprise. Services namespace, and several of the services that COM provides have been duplicated in recent releases of. NET. For example, the System. Transactions namespace in. NET provides the Transaction. Scope class, which provides transaction management without resorting to COM. Similarly, queued components can be replaced by Windows Communication Foundation with an MSMQ transport.