Component Container

Just recently, one of my collegues came up to me asking if I knew what a .NET developer MUST KNOW as per MSDN.... and fired me a simple straight question.....


WHAT IS A COMPONENT CONTAINER ??


Well the question was straight and simple, but certainly the answer was not. Not atleast for me.


So I quick fired MSDN and searched for the same.


Here is what it says:

The IContainer that contains the Component, if any, or nullNothingnullptra null
reference (Nothing in Visual Basic) if the Component is not encapsulated in an
IContainer.

Does not really a help for someone new to the concept. So I expanded my search to google. And off came quite a few results. Now uptill now, this is what I could understand and would CERTAINLY WELCOME OTHERS THOUGHTS ON IT