Over a year ago I was asked to do some COM component programming. It was tempting, since I already was fluent in C, C++ and several other programming languages, but did not have any experience with COM component programming. This was a great motivation to learn more, and I went shopping for a good book on subject right away.

There are quite a few books about COM and COM+. However, most of them are very “heavy” in their content and assume that the reader is quite familiar and comfortable with the COM interfacing and component model, or the books are somewhat clumsy explaining the basics. I agree that one determined to do COM programming better be fluent in C and C++ or at least Visual Basic, and have a good idea about MS Windows internal intricacies. But most books seemed to assume much more, or the examples presented were too involved and big to reveal the basic concepts. Thus the learning curve would be prohibitively slow.

Finally I found what I was looking for: “Mastering COM and COM+” by Ash Rofail and Yasser Shohoud, published by SYBEX. The book initially seemed to fit my requirements of introducing me to COM components and carrying me through to more advanced COM programming for a price of $39.

One notable feature of the book is that it covers both programming using Visual C++ and Visual Basic, while other books seldom went beyond C or VC++.

Contents of the book

The book has 6 parts with 19 chapters in total. The parts are as follows:
1) Understanding COM
- Basics about COM, interfaces, types, clients, servers, etc.
- Building and using COM Servers in VC++ (for C++ programmers)
- Building and using COM Servers in VB (for Visual Basic lovers)
2) COM for the Internet
- Building and using ActiveX Controls in VC++ and VB (Practical intro to ActiveX)
- Building Internet COM components in VC++ and VB (ActiveX and DHTML)
3) Understanding DCOM
- Building DCOM servers in VC++ and VB
4) Understanding COM+
- Overview, Building COM+ components in VC++ and VB
- Understanding MSMQ
5) Advanced COM and COM+
- COM+ services for VC and VB
- COM and COM+ security
- COM features in Windows 2000
6) Debugging and deploying COM and COM+ applications.

Structure

The book is for an experienced programmer, it does not teach C++ or Visual Basic but rather use them to illustrate COM techniques.

The book starts out with an intro, explanation of concepts and pros and cons of COM and COM+. There are examples carried through the book which are simple with no unnecessary details, yet self-contained. This makes it easy to read and understand them, as well as try them out by hand on your computer.

Unfortunately there was no CD with the sample code, however this information available for download over the Internet.

My experience

The book was great help for self-teaching COM programming, as well as nice reference later when doing actual real programming. My first real project contained modules written in Visual C++ as well as test and profiling module written in Visual Basic. The project was custom database access module with set of features for fast and secure data access, including data compression and encryption. My designed system was a success, which makes the book to be a success as well.


Recommended: Yes