Specifications

COM+ reference
6
Glink: API reference manual Gallagher & Robertson
Differences between the fat and thin clients
The main difference between the fat and thin-client versions of the GlinkApi
Com+ object is that the fat-clients Glink.GlinApi object can be displayed by
calling the setVisible method. When displayed, the fat-client is GL.EXE. Each
new fat-client Glink.GlinkApi object starts the execution of a new instance
of Glink. A thin-client GlinkApi.GlinkApi object resides as a single object
within the multi-threaded GLINKAPI.EXE out-of-process server and cannot be
displayed.
Both GL.EXE and GLINKAPI.EXE have approximately the same sized
footprint in memory at start-up, however the creation of multiple thin-client
GlinkApi.GlinkApi objects only requires additional memory for the
objects data which is negligible compared to the memory requirements for
starting up a new process.
As mentioned above, the object class names are different, Glink.GlinkApi
for the fat-client and GlinkApi.GlinkApi for the thin-client. The interfaces
are identical but the following methods have no effect in the thin-client API:
noScreen
noToolbar
scriptCommand
scriptFile
scriptTerminate
setSplashScreenVisible
setVisible
As there is no user interface to the object, the following GlinkEvent will not be
generated:
GlinkEvent_CommandKeyTyped
GlinkEvent_KeyTyped
If a GlinkApi program is written without the need for Glink to be visible, then
normally the only difference between using the fat or thin-client versions of the
API is the actual class name used when the object is create, Glink.GlinkApi
or GlinkApi.GlinkApi.
The Glink Professional edition license restricts to 5 simultaneous GlinkApi
sessions per user. The Enterprise edition will be limited by license session’s limit
whether it is Glink or GlinkApi sessions.