We've already learned that we're going to be working with UNOs—OpenOffice.org's Universal Network Objects—and to understand them better, we're actually going to start at the bottom and work our way upwards.
At its simplest level, we've got a client (your macro) that interfaces with, well, with an interface:
Each interface is simply made up of a set of one or more methods, and you can use these methods to:
Get or set parameters
Control the operation of any functionality that the interface defines
A service is a UNO component—the building block of OOo Calc. Each service consists of one or more interfaces and it has a set of types associated with it (and yes, you would be right it thinking that the interface is a type as well):
You'll find that there are four types associated with the services:
Constants
Enums
Exceptions
Structs
It'll be obvious to you what three of the property types are used...