What is OLE Automation in vb?

Answer 1

OLE, pronounced olé (oh-leh), is an abbreviation of Object Linking and Embedding, a means of placing one object inside another, such that the embedded object remains independent of the object into which it is embedded.

As a simple example, when you insert one image inside another, the two images become merged and there's no way to separate them other than by going back to the original sources. With OLE, the two images remain independent of each other and can therefore be edited independently of each other. Essentially, one image acts as the OLE container for the embedded image.

There are two ways to use OLE: by copying the source object or by linking to the source object. If you make a copy, the source and the copy are independent of each other but the copy is also independent of its container. By linking to the source, there is only one instance of the object. Thus whether you edit the source or the embedded object, you are editing the same object. The container and the object are linked.

OLE was originally intended to provide a means of creating compound documents, such as inserting a spreadsheet into a word processing document, or a graph into a slideshow, such that the objects could be still be edited in the applications that created them as well as allowing the compound documents to automatically update themselves whenever the sources were updated. However, the technology was extended such that any object could enable OLE and thus be embedded in any container that supported OLE. ActiveX became an extension of OLE, both of which are part of COM, the Component Object Model.

Answer 2

It is the part of OLE, which allows to take control of other application from VB.