what is com, api, mfc?

dear sirs

please help me!!!!

i am really confused with these concepts.

what is MFC?(microsoft foundation classes)
what is com?
what is api?
and where does dll fit into these ones?

how are all these related to each other.
i am not able to draw a line between these things.

i would be grateful if you could give me a brief idea of all these and also brief me about their uses.

Thank you

MFC

MFC Tutorials And Samples

The Application Programming Interface allows you to take control of some of the inner functionality of Windows to manipulate such things asr multimedia functions, graphics, customi dialog boxes, and leverage file shell operations, to mention a few.