Customer Reviews

Beginning Atl Com Programming

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

This book gives a serious coverage of ATL COM that will repay readers' efforts. It's far from easy, and the organization could be improved in places. For example, I'm one of those people who absolutely has to know what's going on "under the hood", but the implementation details come a little early (in Chapter 1). Had to experiment with the order of interface entries in the idl file and think a lot about vtables, interface pointer casting, multiple inheritance, and so on before I began to understand what Chap. 1 is all about. Some more explanation at judicious places in Chap. 1 would be helpful.

To get the most out of this book, download the code from Wrox and fool around with it. This book really covers the nitty gritty of developing ATL COM projects from scratch. Marshaling, threading, connectable objects, persistence are discussed, and a full control is built in Chap. 8.

For some reason, perhaps because the word "beginning" appears in the title, Wrox ranks this book below Professional MFC in difficulty (see the flow chart on the back cover of the book). Actually, it's quite advanced and belongs at the top of the hierarchy. I think it's more detailed and difficult (but also more rewarding) than other books on the subject.

As a VC++ and VB programmer, and the attempted reader of this publication for several months, this book never ceases to amaze me at how thoroughly poor it is in several aspects. I was perplexed by the detail that was covered by the first few chapters - immediately the reader in confronted by implementation details without first explaining the overall concepts. It seems as though the authors, have munged theory, tutorial, and reference together in each chapter, which unfortunately serves only to confuse rather than demystify ATL and COM. Other COM books take different approaches - chapters alternating between theory and practical tutorials. My biggest criticism is that seemingly straightforward concepts are explained to death, whilst the more complicated features are explained extremely poorly.

I fear this book has definitely suffered from the 'too many cooks spoiling the broth' scenario. After a while I sought comfort in other COM pulblications for VC++ and VB, both from WROX and SAMS, which proved considerably better.

This book was very confusing for me, and I am VERY fluent in C++/MFC. The authors used a LOT of really big words that I had no clue what they meant, without defining what they meant. I feel like they didn't sufficiently explain some of the core concepts, such as what an interface is, what a method is, why you would have 2 interfaces in 1 COM componet, etc... The chapters were too long and should have been broken up into more short chapters. They covered several subjects in each chapter. I think that the authors are very bright people who understand COM very well, and when they wrote this, they read it and said, "That makes perfect sense..." without having any newcomers read it.

I can imagine how hard it was for the reviewers before me. I actually had a hard time when I tried to learn com and atl using this book. I could not get through to chapter 2 even I understood VC and MFC. after I read Inside COM, I come back to this book, Gee! it makes sense. good luck!

this book is horrible. i find it hard to believe that grimes contributed to this book. whether you're a beginner or not, check out grimes' excellent book "professional dcom programming" instead.

I have now finished reading this book - and am chuffed about how I am now traversing with ease various ATL examples I have found on the net. I give it four stars. Prior to reading it, I had no COM experince and no MFC experience (only win32api and c++).

BAD BITS: Like other readers, I found the chapter 2 client-from-server-wizard bit to be unsuitable. At the time I was still trying to grasp the main concepts. I just skipped that bit.

And also, perhaps the chapters are a bit long, they cover alot in one chapter.

GOODBITS: Comprehensive - for me, this book left no questions unanswered. If you reread a section you will eventually understand it. I constantly annotated with a pencil things such as "see pagexx", "see pagezz", But its all in there!

Well chosen examples - they like throwing in examples that expose the little technical quirks that I assume will be hard to figure out unaided. It is true that this would make a good reference aswell as a learning guide.

Technical detail - I like to know what is actually going on behind the scenes, and in all those macros. This book told me.

I thoroughly recommend this book for those with no MFC or COM experience. I would recommend re-reading chapters if you get lost. The examples aren't that important, (I think I did about 4 examples all up). Goodluck - its challenging, but what you are capable of when you get to the end is quite impressive.

I got about half way through it and found myself skipping more than reading. Few examples, too much talk about obtuse data structures that even after the description I was left wondering if it was important. Just not enough teaching. The authors need to learn a key axiom of writing: show don't tell. Might be a good reference book, however.

Chapter 2, learning basic ATL was great, but after that the book went south. If you are new to COM or ATL try another book.

This book reads like a novel. After reading 'Beginning Linux Programming' 2 yrs ago, I had no respect for Wrox Press because of lack of details, however, this book was a fantastic one. But then again, I have read "Inside COM" and "Essential COM" prior to this reading. If you have a good understanding of how COM works, get this book. It is an awesome intro to ATL. Check out "ATL internals" & "Proffesional ATL COM programming" as well if you are a serious ATL developer

To much digging needed to find the few jewels here. The organization of the material is what hurts this book most. In chapter 2, after a brief intro into ATL and COM, they launch into the implementation of an ATL client, which consists (I'm not making this up) of running the ATL wizard and then deleting most of the output! It doesn't get any better further along, either. I recommend reading another title. Any other title.

I read this book after reading "Inside Com" and "Beginning MFC/COM", which were both very good. This book is very confusing. Its very difficult to follow the author(s) logic and they get frequently to in-depth for a beginner book. The examples should have been less in-depth as far background and technical specs go, and they should have applied more hands-on examples. It seemed as though they all took turns writing a paragraph and then passing it on because its not easy to follow.