Description:
Choosing one stellar title from the pack of books that cover the Component Object Model (COM) and its related technologies is typically an arduous task. Understanding and Programming COM+ distinguishes itself with a slow pace, thoroughness across topics, and clear explanations. An indication of the slow pace can be found in the time required to reach the discussion of IUnknown, the interface that every COM class must implement. This book may not mention the interface until page 80, however, the preceding sections provide a rich background on OLE, COM, and ancillary information on multitiered systems as well as the process of setting up a testbed. The optimistically proposed testbed relies on Windows 2000 Professional, Windows 2000 Domain controller, and Windows NT. Luckily, the majority of the examples in the book do not require such a complex setup to be run. However, in part 3, Windows DNA, the described testbed, serves as an optimal solution. Advancing from the slow introduction to the very involved discussions in part 3, the book spans COM, COM+, Distributed COM (DCOM), and Active Template Library (ATL), with threading, Microsoft Message Queue Server, security, and other design issues addressed where appropriate. This book also differentiates itself by depending on two programming languages to demonstrate COM implementations. Although the author seems to prefer, and at times champion, Visual Basic COM programming, C++ programmers will be happy to note that the majority of the code examples are in C++. Unfortunately, Java programmers get short shrift--there's almost no coverage of Visual J++ COM. For comprehensive, thorough explanations with useful code using COM, though, this book is hard to beat. --John Keogh Topics covered: History of COM, OLE, overview of COM, DCOM and COM+, distributed systems architecture, creating a testbed, classes and interfaces, implementing a COM class in C++, implementing a COM class in Visual Basic, introduction to COM servers, Inprocess servers, class factories, creating a server, Active Template Library, Microsoft IDL, out of process (exe) servers, going from COM to DCOM, programming for DCOM, overview of DCOM, Automation and Visual Basic, collections, error handling and debugging, multithreading in COM, COM+, developing for COM+ in Visual Basic, developing for COM+ in Visual C++, threading issues in COM+, COM+ and Windows 2000 Security, introduction to SQL Server, ActiveX Data Objects (ADO), using COM+ in the middle tier, transactions, COM+, and Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator, Web application programming with COM+, Active Server Pages and COM+, MSMQ (nice discussion), events, scalability, clustering, load balancing, object pooling.
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