A subset of MFC is designed to support COM, while most of the
Active Template Library (ATL) is designed for COM programming.
This section of topics describes MFC's support for COM. Active
technologies (such as ActiveX controls, Active document
containment, OLE, and so on) use the Component Object Model
(COM) to enable software components to interact with one another
in a networked environment, regardless of the language with
which they were created. Active technologies can be used to
create applications that run on the desktop or the Internet. For
more information see Introduction to COM or The Component Object
Model. Active technologies include both client and server
technologies, including the following: Active document
containment, supported in MFC versions 4.2 and later, allows
users to view active documents (such as Microsoft Excel or Word
files) and activate the entire interface of the document's
native application in the entire client area of an active
document container such as the Microsoft Office Bi