4.2.2 DTM State Machine

The following state machine shows the different states of a DTM.

Figure 4 State machine of a DTM

The table below defines the interfaces of a DTM which can be used by a Frame Application at the shown states.

Remark: At the Zombie State not all DTMs must support reload instance via IPersistXXX interfaces, e.g. DTMs written in Visual Basic.

Remark concerning the transition between states and methods with asynchronous behavior: The call of methods, which are defined with an asynchronous behavior (e.g. PrepareToRelease()) will start the transition. The related end state will be reached, when the according method was called (e.g. OnPreparedToRelease()).

Remark concerning the transition between states in case of errors: If the method, which leads to the transition between states, fails (e.g. return value is FALSE or a COM error appears), the state is left unchanged.

The table below defines the interfaces of a Frame Application which can be used by a DTM (starting from FDT version 1.2.1) at the shown states. A Frame Application must be aware that after IDtm:Environment() an older DTM may call any container interface method.