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<!DOCTYPE chapter PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.4//EN"
  "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.4/docbookx.dtd">
<chapter id="VirtualBoxAPI">
  <title>VirtualBox programming interfaces</title>

  <para>VirtualBox comes with comprehensive support for third-party
  developers. The so-called "Main API" of VirtualBox exposes the entire
  feature set of the virtualization engine. It is completely documented and
  available to anyone who wishes to control VirtualBox programmatically.
  </para>

  <para>The Main API is made available to C++ clients through COM (on Windows
  hosts) or XPCOM (on other hosts). Bridges also exist for SOAP, Java and
  Python.</para>

  <para>All programming information (documentation, reference information,
  header and other interface files as well as samples) have been split out to
  a separate <emphasis role="bold">Software Development Kit (SDK),</emphasis>
  which is available for download from <ulink type=""
  url="http://www.virtualbox.org">http://www.virtualbox.org</ulink>. In
  particular, the SDK comes with a "Programming Guide and Reference" in PDF
  format, which contains, among other things, the information that was
  previously in this chapter of the User Manual.</para>
</chapter>