C H A P T E R  7

The Essence of Stream Device Drivers

Stream interface device driver are the most frequently developed device drivers for Windows Embedded Compact 7 as it is for earlier versions of Windows CE. Stream device drivers are loaded and managed by Device Manager and provide a well-known unified interface. Therefore, it allows user mode applications to access stream interface device drivers’ services. User mode applications use file system APIs such as CreateFile to open an instance of a stream interface device driver and file I/O APIs to read or write data from and to the device. The stream interface can be found in kernel mode device drivers as well as user mode device drivers and in this latest version of the operating system in filter device drivers.