Mini-Servers vs. Full Servers (Components) -- Linking

A mini-server can't be run as a stand-alone program; it depends on a container application to launch it. It can't do its own file I/O but depends on the container's files. A full server, on the other hand, can be run both as a stand-alone program and from a container. When it's running as a stand-alone program, it can read and write its own files, which means that it supports OLE linking. With embedding, the container document contains all the data that the component needs; with linking, the container contains only the name of a file that the component must open.