Editing Windows API (section)

==Related technologies==

Many Microsoft technologies use the Windows API -- as most software running on Windows does. As middle-ware between Windows API and an application, the following technologies provide some access to Windows API. Some technologies are described as [[Wrapper library|wrapping]] Windows API, but this is debatable since they don't provide or expose all of the capabilities of Windows API. 

* [[Microsoft Foundation Class Library]] (MFC) exposes some of Windows API functionality in [[C++]] [[Class (computer science)|classes]], and thus allows a more [[Object-oriented programming|object-oriented]] way to interact with the API
* [[Active Template Library]] (ATL) is a [[C++]] [[Template (programming)|template]] library that provides some Windows API access
* [[Windows Template Library]] (WTL) was developed as an extension to ATL, and intended as a smaller alternative to MFC
* Most [[application framework]]s for Windows provide some access to Windows API; including [[.NET Framework|.NET runtime]] and [[Java (programming language)|Java virtual machine]] and any other [[programming language]]s targeting Windows
* Various technologies for communicating between components and applications {{endash}} starting with [[Dynamic Data Exchange]] (DDE), which was superseded by [[Object Linking and Embedding]] (OLE) and later by the [[Component Object Model]] (COM), [[OLE Automation|Automation Objects]], [[ActiveX]] controls, and the [[.NET Framework]]

Although almost all Windows programs use the Windows API, on the Windows NT line of operating systems, programs that start early in the [[Windows NT startup process|Windows startup process]] use the [[Windows Native API|Native API]] instead.<ref name="technet-nativeapi">{{cite web|website=[[Microsoft Docs]]|date=November 2006|url=https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/resources/inside-native-applications|title=Inside Native Applications|first=Mark|last=Russinovich|author-link=Mark Russinovich|access-date=April 12, 2022}}</ref>