Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Glossary
Glossary - O
OLE - Online Learning Environment
An architecture developed by Microsoft for the creation of compound documents, which are containers into which the user can import many different types of information object, e.g. text, images, sound, or video, created by different applications. An embedded object is downloaded to the compound document, and is editable within that document, although it still maintains a relationship with its originating application. A linked object remains within its original application and the compound document contains a pointer to it; when the object is edited in its original application, the changes also appear in the compound document. This results in reduced file sizes, and it also overcomes versioning problems: only a single master file is updated - and the updates automatically appear in all the documents which point to that master. Digital archivists must understand how files are combined in order to preserve them.
