Rating: 
Summary: A poorly written book
Review: A good author carefully orders what he throws out. He will first explain concept A, B and C which can be directly understood, then he explains concept D using concept A, B, C. It needs a lot of brain power of the author to achieve this concept planning and tracking.The author of this book does not bother to do that. I bet he never had a clear picture on what he had explained earlier in his book. He would suddenly start to use a new concept D to explain concept E, as if D had been well explained before. Such defects spread over this book. Well if an author thinks there is no way to explain everything at this stage, at least he should tell the reader that "Don't worry about concept D mentioned here. We will explain it in next chapter". But the author of this book also doesn't bother to do that. So there were many cases that I spent many many hours trying to figure out some concepts just mentioned. I browse earlier chapters again and again, I wrote testing code to try to find answers, ... , but finally gave up and go ahead, and find that it was explained 50 pages later. Even worse, some are never explained. One example of the poor writing of this book: at the introduction part, the author alternatively uses VC's OLE/COM Object Viewer and Windows regedit to view different entries of the registry, but he never explained why he uses the first to view some and uses the other to view others. In fact some info can only be viewed with one and some are better viewed by the other, and there are some good reasons behind that, which should be understood and will be very helpful. By simply giving 200 words he would have let the reader know that. But he wouldn't bother, leaving reader confused. When I was reading this book, I made scores of pages of notes just to read the first several chapters - because there were so many things that the book hasn't told me and I have figured out myself. Finally I quitted and bought another book: Developer's Workshop to COM and ATL 3.0. I found that I no longer need to make any notes, because everything I want to know is clearly written on where it should be. The book was organized in such a way that whenever you might have any question, read the next sentense, the answer lies in it. No pains at all. I am amazed that how big a level difference there can be between two books that are both available on the market. In general, for an absolute new learner of COM who even does not know what "COM run time" means, this Understanding and Programming COM+ is too difficult to understand. For people who knows some basic concepts such as IUnknown, QueryInterface, CoCreateInstance, this book is too limited and primary. There are plenty of better books.
Rating: 
Summary: Superb COM+ Book
Review: A great book, better beyond my expectations. In-depth yet clear.
Rating: 
Summary: Average
Review: All the different resources out there on COM and COM+ intimidated me. When I found this book, I was hesitant at buying it because it dealt with C++ also, and I am strictly a VB/Web programmer. However, now that I bought it and am going through the examples and chapters, I am realizing that this is one of the key benefits of this book. VB hides so many of the intricate details of COM/COM+ that you never really know how it works until you see it done in C++. So, buy this book read it through and do the examples. Then after wards you can consider getting a book strictly on VB programming. From what I have seen so far (on chapter 4) this book focuses heavily on making the reader not just know who to write VB COM+ objects, but actually understand how the IUnknown Interface (just one of many items) ties in with instantiating and destroying objects; basically stuff you will never need to know about with VB. So, once again if you really want to know more then just how to build a VB COM+ object then buy this book. Oh yeah, this book also covers all the COM+ Services like message queuing, transaction, and security (and much more)!!!!! You will want to have at least one machine with win2k server, and sql server 7. The book recommends three machines but it can be done with one for a test bed.
Rating:
Summary: Great Book
Review: All the different resources out there on COM and COM+ intimidated me. When I found this book, I was hesitant at buying it because it dealt with C++ also, and I am strictly a VB/Web programmer. However, now that I bought it and am going through the examples and chapters, I am realizing that this is one of the key benefits of this book. VB hides so many of the intricate details of COM/COM+ that you never really know how it works until you see it done in C++. So, buy this book read it through and do the examples. Then after wards you can consider getting a book strictly on VB programming. From what I have seen so far (on chapter 4) this book focuses heavily on making the reader not just know who to write VB COM+ objects, but actually understand how the IUnknown Interface (just one of many items) ties in with instantiating and destroying objects; basically stuff you will never need to know about with VB. So, once again if you really want to know more then just how to build a VB COM+ object then buy this book. Oh yeah, this book also covers all the COM+ Services like message queuing, transaction, and security (and much more)!!!!! You will want to have at least one machine with win2k server, and sql server 7. The book recommends three machines but it can be done with one for a test bed.
Rating: 
Summary: Challenges in learning COM+ and how this book helps you!
Review: COM+ is a fascinating new technology with the potential to profoundly change how we develop enterprise applications. There are two big challenges to learning this new technology. The first is understanding the underlying COM. Although someday building a COM+ component may be a trivial extension of the programming language (we're not that far away today in Visual Basic), now you have to create a COM component first using traditional means, such as ATL. So if you want to take advantage of all the power of COM+ that you've read about, you have to learn COM first. The second big challenge is that to apply COM+ in a real application you very typically need to use other significant technologies, such as databases, security, web programming, etc. Getting a simple distributed application up and running using SQL Server, Internet Information Services, Windows 2000 and COM+ is no simple matter if you are a neophyte in any of the auxiliary technologies. I've thought about the first issue for a long time, and developed training materials over the last several years on COM and OLE, ActiveX and DCOM. I feel I've gotten the knack for explaining these concepts, and was happy for the opportunity to incorporate (and hopefully improve!) these explanations in my COM+ book. Thus this book is self-contained with respect to background in COM. I've also tried to make the book as self-contained as possible on the related technologies you need to build applications. Thus there is a "survival guide" to SQL Server, a discussion of OLE DB and ActiveX Data Objects, much material on security, a tutorial on Windows 2000 administration, and a long chapter on Web programming. The heart of the book, of course, is COM+ itself. Here you'll find the principles of context, activation and interception, COM+ support for concurrency, detailed coverage of distributed transactions and COM+ support for them, Queued Components, loosely coupled events, object pooling, load balancing, and much more. I've tried to track the moving target of COM+ and thus have pulled some material, such as the interesting in-memory database that did not make it into the final product. The book uses both C++ and Visual Basic as important development languages. One of the great strengths of COM is that it is language neutral, and different parts of an application can be developed in the most appropriate language. This approach works well in development, and it also is useful in learning the subject. There is somewhat greater emphasis on C++ in the COM part, because C++ helps in understanding the concepts of COM better than Visual Basic, which hides so much. On the other hand, in the COM+ part I focus more on Visual Basic, because we are interested in learning the important services provided by COM+ without getting bogged down by the more complex coding required by C++. I've tried to structure the book so that it will be useful to both C++ and Visual Basic programmers. If you are a C++ programmer you should have no trouble creating simple Visual Basic client programs. There is also complete coverage on implementing Visual Basic servers. If you are a Visual Basic programmer, study the conceptual parts of the COM chapters and the chapter on implementing COM servers using Visual Basic. Then you should be well prepared for the COM+ part, which is primarily in Visual Basic. There is a lot of emphasis on example programs, all of which are included on the CD. I hope you enjoy the book! A final thought -- I'm interested in developing a mutually supportive online community of technical people interested in new software technologies like COM+. If interested, please send me email!
Rating:
Summary: I would sell my soul for this book.
Review: For the professional programmer only: Clear and concise step-through using Visual C++. *.dsw files are there for the Visual C++ programmer--Click on the .dsw and straight away it launches Visual C++ 6.0. (I have all the ptches as of 2002.10.10.) Again, step-by-step instructions, useless for a beginner; Gold for the pro, who needs both excellent guidance and the code on CD. I didn't run the install program. I copied the CD to disk, instead. Then I looked inside the chapter directories, and clicked on *.dsw.
Rating:
Summary: I would sell my soul for this book.
Review: For the professional programmer only: Clear and concise step-through using Visual C++. *.dsw files are there for the Visual C++ programmer--Click on the .dsw and straight away it launches Visual C++ 6.0. (I have all the ptches as of 2002.10.10.) Again, step-by-step instructions, useless for a beginner; Gold for the pro, who needs both excellent guidance and the code on CD. I didn't run the install program. I copied the CD to disk, instead. Then I looked inside the chapter directories, and clicked on *.dsw.
Rating:
Summary: extensive and good exapmple
Review: I have just translated this book from english into chineses.when i introduced the contents of this book to some software programmer,they are very eager to have deep look into it.it is just right time for us to mater COM+ to implement Internet sever.I hope to see some more this kind of book.
Rating:
Summary: Practical.
Review: I have read just about every COM related books for C++ out in the market. Unlike many books that focus heavily on COM's technicality, this book focuses on COM's theory at a very high level. Compared to many other COM books out in the market, this is a very well written book. Very easy to read, quick to the point, and doesnt confuse beginners with heavy technical information. However, I must admit that it doesn't delve much into the internals of COM nor ATL. I would recommand this book to those who are just starting out COM+ or those who failed to fully grasp 'essensial Com' book.
Rating:
Summary: Average
Review: If you are new to COM or Windows DNA development, then I would probably recommend this book. If you already know the basic inner-workings of COM (IUnknown, IDispatch, Registry, InProc/Out-of-Proc etc, then I would recommend passing on this one. Here's how the book is broken out: Part 1 - Introduction to Windows DNA Part 2 - COM fundamentals and details Part 3 - COM+ high-level overview Bottom Line: Good book if you are looking for a broad approach. The author moves very carefully on each topic, and covers things very well, but at a high and fairly basic level. If you need deep details, design, or code examples specific to COM+, I would not recommend this one. If the majority of this book truly dealt with building COM+ applications, then it might be good, but it doesn't
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