Inter-application communication mechanism and GUI. In OLE’s terminology, both ‘ object linking ’ and ‘ object embedding ’ mean what we call object containment in this section.
Current computers handle various types of intellectual resources. Unless a system provides a dedicated functional linkage between any pair of these object types, it fails to integrate these objects. Different pairs require different types of linkages. If there are n different types, we require O(n2) different types of linkages. This is the essential challenge of integration systems that are open to the future addition of new intellectual resource types.
Meme-media architectures solve this problem by separating media from their contents, and standardizing the logical structure and the interface of the primitive media objects.
Each primitive media object consists of its wrapper and its content. Its wrapper defines its standard media structure and interface.
In a media-based architecture,only one type of functional linkage is used to connect any pair of wrappers