ActiveX Components (ActiveX Controls, COM Objects & OLE Objects) / Oracle / SUN (Oracle Tools & Oracle Components)

Microsoft first introduced the term ActiveX in 1996 when they launched a downloadable user interface control or software component that could be used by Internet Explorer to give more interactive or active content on a Web page to the reader. ActiveX controls were a re-branded subset of OLE custom controls (OCX) or OLE controls (OCXes) that were streamlined for downloading over the Internet and that could be digitally signed for security and authentication reasons. These ActiveX downloads were also tagged or marked as being safe for scripting and safe for initialization, to help give users confidence in using them in ActiveX Internet apps, as they were less likely to start making unauthorized actions on their systems. ActiveX controls also supported threading models, such as Apartment Model Threading, to try and improve performance in a multi-user or multi-process environment.

OLE controls (OCX's) or Object Linking and Embedding controls were themselves the successor to VBX controls first introduced by Microsoft to help programmers extend the functionality and features of their Visual Basic program by buying and reusing a VBX control built by another programmer or company, with expertise in a specific area. VBXes were limited to 16 bit usage for example on Windows 3.x, OCXes were available for both 16 bit or 32 bit architectures and began being widely used as people adopted Windows 95, although most people tended to use VBXes on 16-bit systems and OCX controls or OLE components on 32-bit systems for performance reasons. OLE itself was based on earlier work by Microsoft in their Office products to allow data to be exchanged and reused as objects inside other documents or files, such as embedding an Excel spreadsheet in a Word document and updating the content of that Excel spreadsheet for display using Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE). Hence the term OLE document, that is still in use today.

OLE was part of the Microsoft COM or Component Object Model, that enabled programmers to reuse software components and services in a logical and object oriented manner. COM was extended and expanded over the years to include DCOM, the Distributed Component Object Model that allowed programmers to call OLE objects or COM objects situated on other computers or servers. COM+ was added to support transaction services using technologies such as Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and this first appeared when Windows 2000 was launched to better support distributed transactions in more complex applications, where higher performance and throughput was required. COM has gradually become a common term used to refer to: COM, DCOM, COM+, OLE and ActiveX technologies in general.

ActiveX components can be created in a variety of object oriented programming languages, but are most commonly created using C++ and the Microsoft Foundation Class (MFC), such as: MFC 4.0, MFC 4.2 and MFC 6.0. When VB 5 was released in became possible for a Visual Basic programmer to create an ActiveX component for reuse by other people and whilst most programmers claim that the best ActiveX components were written in Visual C++ or by utilizing the ActiveX Template Library, it did not stop some entrepreneurial developers from Janus Systems writing one of the bestselling ActiveX UI controls of all time in VB5 and VB6, called Janus GridEx, a VB6 ActiveX, that gives the look and feel of the Microsoft Outlook UI inside your app.

ActiveX components and ActiveX controls come with a variety of file extensions such as: .exe, .dll and .ocx and these denote a certain type of usage either in-process as part of your program or app (an ActiveX DLL), or out-of-process as a standalone executable (an ActiveX Exe), as an ActiveX control or OCX control mainly used as a UI control on a form or page. Downloadable ActiveX controls are also packaged as .cab files or Cabinet files. These CAB files are packages of files compressed to take up less space and hence can be downloaded more efficiently over the Internet.

In this ActiveX Component gallery you will find a variety of commercial products that are ActiveX objects or ActiveX controls that people sometime refer to as VB controls or as a VB object, as they are often used within Visual Basic. You will find ActiveX Windows components that allow you to carry out visuals tasks, such as an ActiveX UI control for displaying video or images, an ActiveX image control or a non-Visual ActiveX upload component that will allow you to push a file up onto a server over the Internet using HTTP or FTP protocols.

In this Oracle software product gallery you will find products that are compatible with: Oracle software platforms and frameworks, Oracle databases, Oracle application servers and Oracle Integrated Development Environments (IDEs). Oracle Corporation (ORCL) acquired SUN Microsystems, completing the deal on Jan 27, 2010, plus Oracle had previously acquired BEA Systems completing that deal on Apr 29, 2008. So in this Oracle marketplace, you will also find products that are compatible with SUN Microsystems (JAVA) software products and databases, as well as products that work with BEA Systems (BEAS) software products and BEA application servers.

So you will find: Oracle tools, Oracle utilities, Oracle addins and Oracle db admin tools to help with day to day Oracle database management tasks and common Oracle DBA activities. For Oracle developers you will also find Oracle components, Oracle extensions, Oracle plugins and Oracle developments tools to help make your more productive when writing your next Oracle software project. There are also Oracle components that are available as products to use in your next Oracle app, these Oracle libraries are usually made available as an Oracle Java Class or as an Oracle JavaBean.

The Oracle dev tools can be: searched for on our Web site, evaluated using the Oracle downloads that we have for each product, compared with other Oracle utility or Oracle dev tool products, before you make any purchasing decision. You can also read what your fellow Oracle developers thought about the Oracle tool they downloaded by reading our Oracle reviews. You can also buy, download and license these Oracle tools and Oracle components directly from our Web site.

Finally, we have several Oracle News feeds for each type of Oracle product from the Oracle product range, these News feeds are published as Oracle News pages and also available as Oracle RSS data feeds, so that you can keep up to date with new third party products releases that are compatible with the Oracle software product range.