The COM and COM+ Programming Primer

by Alan Gordon

Book Overview

COM and COM+ are the foundation of virtually every new technology Microsoft is developing, and COM+ is an essential feature of Microsoft's Win 32 platform (and, therefore, a cornerstone of Windows... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0130850322
• ISBN13: 9780130850324
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Pearson
• Length: 796 Pages
• Weight: 3.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 7.0" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Beautifully written but sloppy production

This book is beautifully written. Very clear explanations. A nice logical flow and obviously the author knows his subject well.However, the production of the book is awful. In the text there is code that is missing. In order to solve the problems in building the examples, I downloaded (ftp) the code from the book site. Some of the downloaded code refused to compile due to missing lines. When finally it compiled and built, it refused to run giving "Invalid class string" errors. It is such a shame that such a good book is flawed in this way.In spite of all this, the text is clear and explains the horrors of COM software well.I am glad I bought it.

Learning to use COM and COM+

I have read many books on COM and COM+ and I would recommend this book as one of the essential books to bring any programmer into the world of COM and COM+. Perhaps, it's because of the authors background as a teacher, I don't know, but this book takes EXTREME care in the organization and progression and just as importantly in the source code that goes with it. This really stands out compared with so many of the other books I have come across.I could go on and on, but just to single out one source of praise, the author takes great care in telling the user how to set up the development environment. I have seen so many books that perhaps assume everything will work or that their readers are smart enough to figure this all out for themselves. It was published in 2000, and Microsoft is moving everyone to .NET, but I still believe this is valuable to resource every Microsoft platform programmer interested in making sense of COM, should have on the bookself.

An Excellent Review of COM and Introduction to COM+

This book really clarified a lot of questions for me about COM+ and even MTS. I also found it to be an excellent review of C++ COM programming. Alan Gordon explains the COM+ rationale for stateless objects and creating/releasing database connections _within_ methods. Alan also discusses the advantages and disadvantages of in process and out of process servers, the complexities of COM threading and the concept of COM callbacks. I found this book to be very well written and helpful.

Excellent COM starter and reference

Out of the last 6 COM books I've read over the past 3 months, this is by far the best and helped to clarify concepts in the others. I'd recommend this highly as a 1st COM book. Makes an excellent reference as well. The book is organized in a very logical and progressive manner that makes it not only helpful, but interesting as well. All concepts are made very clear, and plenty of other references are provided. I could actually start a COM project after reading this one.

Rare to find a book so in depth but easy to follow

I was asked to give a 2-hour overview of COM+ to the development staff at my company. I had just started learning and developing with COM+ a few weeks previously. I scoured the web for info, and other than the MS documentation, this book was the only one that contributed to my preparation. Extremely well-written and clear, but very very in depth. Aimed at C++ programmers (I am a VB person), but I still found it more helpful than any of the VB COM books I've looked at. Once I understood the internals of COM+, programming to the COM+ API was a snap. I finally really understand why VB components can't be pooled! The C++ guy on my team also used it to get his pooled component working correctly.