Introduction to the Windows Application Programmer’s Interface (API)
Mary Romero Sweeney · Apress eBooks · 2001
Application software developers need to be able to interface with the operating system in order to provide their applications with capabilities such as sophisticated graphics and communications. Microsoft Windows operating systems provide the software developer access to many powerful routines. The Windows API routines are a set of libraries filled with routines that provide the interface to the operating system, hence the name Application Programmer’s Interface. The Windows API really is the programming interface between an application and the operating system. As testers, we can use these routines to check on operating system statistics such as memory allocation and status. We can also use them to manipulate an application in ways that Visual Basic alone cannot; when you access the many routines in the Windows API, you are actually extending Visual Basic’s capabilities.