Waite Group's COM/DCOM Primer Plus

Rating:
Summary: An OK introduction to COM
Review: I liked the book because it gave a good overview of COM/DCOM technologies. It really is the most friendly introduction to COM development. Since the title indicates this book is a primer, I wasn't expecting anything more. I didn't regret purchasing the book, and I would probably recommend it to someone brand new to COM development.

Having said that, it wasn't the best COM development book I've read, primarily because there was a lot of unnecessary material to wade through. For example, chapter 2 starts by explaining basic C++ object-oriented topics such as classes and inheritance. Presumably the reader is already familiar with these simple concepts, and isn't trying to learn C++ with this book. I'm new to C++ and even I found these topics unnecessary. Since the author explores COM via MFC, the reader never gets a clear understanding of COM itself. More difficult topics, like aggregation, aren't explained at all, but are left to MFC to implement behind the scenes. The main sample program is a big MFC program, which means you have to wade through pages of MFC code to understanding the few lines of COM-specific code. The chapter on multithreading is worthless. It consists of a series of terse descriptions of multithread API calls, followed by a couple of pages of unexplained, uncommented code which use the calls.

Inside COM by Dale Rogerson is a better intro to COM programming, but doesn't cover the breadth of material this book does.

Rating:
Summary: Waiting for the insanity to stop...
Review: I must admit I have just read the 5 first chapters these last 3 days and I feel I've gained a deeper understanding of COM. - However the authors does not state how to set up the VC++ project settings to get the code to work. - I've been fighting of Linker errors most of the time since I started typing in the code. It may be I am not proficient enough in VC++ but with a little help from the book I could be focusing on COM instead of VC++ quirks.

Some of the code included <iostream> and <string> libraries but did not have "using namespace std" in the printed code. Since I have just been studying namespaces this was not the biggest problem for me.

I went to www.mcp.com to fetch updates but I was very dissapointed that there was no updates there.

Even though I feel that the book has allready given me more in depth insight in COM I am dissapointed that I have to spend a lot of time browsing the CD-project code to see what made the samples work.

Rating:
Summary: Waiting for the insanity to stop...
Review: Micro$oft is famous for its ability to push out new development technologies. The reason behind this planned obsolesence is obvious, every time they come out with something new people will have to open their wallets to "keep up."

Don't feel bad, the publishing companies got suckered too.

DCOM is just another disposable technology. As such, it was a complete failure; one that the marketing folks at M$ have tried to bury as quickly as possible under an avalanche of .NET hype.

DCOM was hard to port because, like COM, it is based on a binary standard (i.e. a standard that changes when you leave x86 and go to 64-bit RISC). Not only that, but DCOM doesn't support distributed transactions. Worst of all, DCOM is a very, very complicated technology to use. Three strikes... YOU'RE OUT!

The half-wit MBAs at Micro$oft realized their mistake and have abandoned DCOM, leaving it forever in the backwaters where the only record of its sorry existence are stupid books like this.

I have no idea why someone would want to buy this book. Folks, this is a dead technology. It is no more. It is an ex-techology. If you buy this book, you are lying to yourself. This book will sit an gather dust, unless you can find more productive uses for it...like burning it to stay warm.

Rating:
Summary: A very easy introduction to COM.
Review: Not as good as "Inside COM" which I also rate as a 5 star book but is simpler to understand and can be used very effectively in conjunction with the above named book. Very reasuring to the reader.