  Ten years have passed since the global solutions of advective accretion disks
around black holes and neutron stars were first discovered. Since then they are
enjoying support from observers almost on a daily basis, more so in recent days
with the launching of very high resolution satellites. This review presents the
development of the subject of advective accretion in last twenty five years
leading to the global solutions and their applications. It also shows that
apart from the standard Keplerian disk features in most part of the accretion
flow, future models must incorporate the essential features of the advective
disks, such as the advection of energy and entropy by the flow, centrifugal
barrier supported boundary layer of a black hole, steady and non-steady shocks,
the bulk motion Comptonization of matter close to the black hole, outflows from
the centrifugal barrier etc. Since black holes are `black', methods of their
identification must be indirect, and therefore, the solutions must be known
very accurately. On the horizon, matter moves supersonically, but just before
that it is subsonic due to centrifugal pressure dominated boundary layer or
CENBOL where much of the infall energy is released and outflows are generated.
In this review, we show that advective flow models treat accretion and winds
onto black holes and neutron stars in the same footing. Similarly treated are
the steady and time-dependent behaviour of the boundary layers of neutron stars
and the black holes!
