CORK: CAPE-OPEN Registry Kit

CORK is a utility to inspect and manipulate parts of the Windows registry that deal with CAPE-OPEN category and object registration details. To modify these parts of the registry, one requires write permission to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID of the Windows registry. Often this means that one requires system administration rights. Consult your system administrator when in doubt.

Category IDs

CAPE-OPEN objects are expected to implement one or more CAPE-OPEN categories. This is how CAPE-OPEN objects are recognized by applications. Category information is stored in the registry under HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\"Component Categories".

You can use the Category IDs page in CORK to see which CAPE-OPEN categories are defined, acnd which of those are registered. For registered categories, the name that is shown is the actual name in the registry. If this is not available, the default name is shown between square brackets.

Use the Register All button to make sure all known categories are registered as such. Depending on implementation, client objects may or may not require the category IDs to be registered.

Object Viewer

Use the Object Viewer page in CORK to see which CAPE-OPEN objects are found in the registry, that implement the selected CAPE-OPEN category. When selecting a category, a list of implemented objects will appear on the left side of the page. When you select an object, a description of its registration and details thereof will appear on the right side of the window.

To remove an object from the Windows registry, select the object from the list, and press Unregister. Be careful with this option, since there is no way to restore this information other than by re-registering the object by using the software that created the registration in the first place (often this is done by using regsvr32 to register the DLL that implements the object, but it may require additional registration).

Windows' Component Categories Manager

Windows comes with a Component Categories Manager that takes care of registering CATIDs and enumerating objects that implement specific categories. Alternatively (as most parts of COCO do), one could directly query the Windows registry for object information. CORK supports both these methods. Use the Method menu to switch between these approaches.