I would say it is not you, it is Microsoft. As I remember and anyone can correct me if I am wrong as the subject was introduced to me in an almost backwards order. OCX were originally just toolsetas, that were used to give vb apps more tools. You would use OCX controls to add widgets and functions not available directly from the os or vb. ActiveX became the preferred means of doing this and I believe kept the same extension name. So ActiveX is OCX. It is up to the developer of the OCX on what functionality the component has. From the descript of the above, and the reference to VB calls to the OCX I believe it was meant to be embedded in a VB application and has no means of OLE automation on its own. I can not say that positively without seeing the documentation for the object in question.

I think this has a good overview of the technology from Microsoft's point of view The Component Object Model (COM) and its related COM-based technologies: