COM/DCOM Unleashed (Unleashed Series) [Paperback]

Randy Abernethy (Author), Randy Morin (Author), Jesus Chahin (Author), Randy Charles Morin (Author)

Book Description

Series: Unleashed | Publication Date: March 1999

This guide offers advice on how to build and implement COM and DCOM components. It explains the intricacies of COM and COM servers, shows readers how to build COM objects, and explains how to use DCOM and COM+ to build client/server and web-based enterprise applications.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Written for the intermediate or advanced C++/DCOM developer, COM/DCOM Unleashed provides a wide-ranging guide to advanced topics in DCOM programming, including some excellent coverage of Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) and Microsoft Message Queue (MSMQ) server.

This book begins with a quick glance at today's n-tiered architectures and where Microsoft's Distributed Internet Architecture (DNA) fits in. Instead of a quick fix, the authors suggest that multitiered architectures bring in new design considerations. They provide advice for "balancing the tiers" in order to create maintainable, robust applications.

The book also adequately covers adding persistence to distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) components and how to manage monikers for simplifying access to remote objects. Further sections look at DCOM event handling (and connection points) and furnish explanations of DCOM's threading models, including the use of synchronization objects. Material on using the Windows Registry will help demystify the way DCOM stores component information. The authors look at building DCOM objects with aggregation (which mimics inheritance). Additional advanced topics here include Windows NT services, marshalling, security, and error handling.

The most useful chapters here concentrate on MTS for transaction support and MSMQ for adding message delivery to custom applications. The authors discuss both administration and programming issues, including tools like the MTS Explorer. (Included here is a useful chapter on Microsoft's COM Transaction Integrator [COMTI] mainframe tool.) For MSMQ development, the authors look at both the MSMQ Library API and ActiveX components, which let programmers add message support to their DCOM components. The book closes with some useful material on Microsoft's emerging COM+ standard.

With its grab bag of advanced DCOM topics, this book will be most useful to those readers with a previous understanding of the Active Template Library (ATL) and DCOM. That said, COM/DCOM Unleashed can certainly deepen your knowledge of DCOM and let you write C++/ATL components that make better use of Microsoft's DNA platform. --Richard Dragan

Product Details

• Paperback: 700 pages
• Publisher: Sams Publishing (March 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672313529
• ISBN-13: 978-0672313523
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7.1 x 1.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,250,461 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Worthless. I've never come across a worse book., December 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: COM/DCOM Unleashed (Unleashed Series) (Paperback)

This book is so completely useless that I can't imagine how anybody could publish it. It's very typical of the Unleashed series... all code and chunks of worthless, Incorrigible code. I'm still giving it the 1 star cause it's got some useful information on MSMQ, MTS etc. Ok, so I'm being a stick-in-the-mud, but let me assure you, there are far better resources on COM all over. I can suggest the following literature / sequence for learning and starting to get a grip on COM:

1) Understanding ActiveX and OLE - David Chappel MS-Press [ This is a remarkable work and highly recommended, but you might think of skipping it if you're really short of time ] 2) Essential COM - Don BOX Addison Wesley [ This book is ESSENTIAL. Don't even think of skipping this one or the next one ] 3) Effective COM - Don BOX Addison Wesley [ Good supplement to the one above ] 4) Inside OLE2 - Dave Brockshmeidt (can't spell his name) [ Nothing beats the technical excellence and in-depth content in this book ]

There's a lot of stuff on the Web too... eg. develop.com's COM tutorial. I haven't heard much about it, but coming from Don Box's company, it HAS to be good. There's a nice set of tutorial based samples (itutsamp.exe) that you can download from MSDN. There's a lot of COM happening in the Microsoft Journal, so be sure to catch up on it again at the Microsoft website.

May the force be with you!

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Infrastructure Specialist, September 4, 2000

By 

"bull_dozer" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: COM/DCOM Unleashed (Unleashed Series) (Paperback)

Anyone rating this book above a one is either a friend of the author or has shares in the publisher. The books consists of random chapters with no common thread or purpose.

From a basic introduction to multi-tier applications we jump into advanced COM techniques (where were the basic ones?) with no details of their use or benefit.

The book requires a good deal of COM/DCOM knowledge to make sense of it and offers little insight or explanation. For example, the different threading types are coded with little description in the text and there is no discussion as to their use or application.

I picked the book up for $7 dollars and I feel its barely worth that, never mind $31.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Strong Foundation, June 2, 1999

By 

Scot Hillier "Scot Hillier" (New Haven,CT) - See all my reviews

This review is from: COM/DCOM Unleashed (Unleashed Series) (Paperback)

This book provides a strong foundation for developers looking to master Microsoft component technologies. The authors have a clear sense of purpose and thorough understanding of the concepts. The book does an excellent job of taking the reader from theory to practice with lots of good code examples. You'll find coverage here of everything needed to successfully created distributed applications for the Windows DNA world.

Scot Hillier Author "MTS Programming with Visual Basic"