Customer Reviews

Essence of OLE With Active X, The: A Programmer's Workbook

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When I started reading this book, I thought it looked pretty good. Then I started to see goofy assertions about how the author thought C++ should be coded (which were downright wrong). It makes me mad when people assume that the way to program in C++ is the way MFC is programmed. This book perpertuates this idea. Telling people that multiple inheritance in bad has no place in this book. If the author does not understand the proper use of this C++ feature, then they should not discuss it. It is hardly pertinent to the subject in the first place.

I also noticed that the book was originally OLE stuff that has been re-purposed for ActiveX.

There are nuggets of information if you want to wade through this book though.

If you're like me, and you're having a hard time deciphering almost any book related to Microsoft OLE, you'll be interested in the book, "The Essence of OLE with Active X." For those of you whose eyelids do not turn inside-out when trying to read traditional OLE/Active X literature, you can safely avoid reading "The Essence of OLE with Active X." . Here's a test. Try to read the following statement: "...EnumCache enumerates the present cached formats through IEnumSTATData, as in IDAtaObject:EnumDADvise. The pAdvSink field of the enumerated structures holds IAdviseSink pointers to sinks implemented in the cache that are connected to a local or remote orInproc object." Sound familiar? Check your eyelids. I'll leave it to you to guess in which OLE book I actually found this statement. As a hint, I will just tell you that it is the one that EVERYONE has on their desks, looks impressive, weighs between 14-15 lbs, still looks BRAND NEW on everybody's bookshelf, makes numerous references to Koalas.... For those who have almost given up on books on OLE, Active X, COM, and other OLE "buzz words", there is an author, David S. Platt, who excels at explaining things "for the rest of us." He assumes some limited knowledge of Windows programming using C/C ++, and possibly that the reader has a least attempted to read some of the unreadable, worthless pablum currently documenting OLE technologies, but assumes nothing else. "The Essence of OLE with Active X" is a must-read for anyone who needs to get serious about learning the fundamentals of OLE and Active X technologies. It doesn't dull the brain like most "how-to" books, yet it is rooted enough in the real world that it doesn't lose you like most "serious" books either. I already recommend it to other people working at Microsoft. Believe me, it is one of the easiest way to make a lot of friends fast

David has done us all a great service in writing this book. His clear explanations and relevant code samples speak volumes. If you've never read anything about OLE, this is the place to start. I especially liked how he shows the pure OLE way to do things and then compares that with using MFC to do the same thing. He also points out many of the gotcha's when using MFC. His writing style is clear and his sense of humour is entertaining. All I can say is get it. It's definitely worth it!

Platt says "Without warning, OLE will turn on you, and will bite you. You just have to bite back harder." This book, the core of Platt's OLE course at the Harvard Extension School in Cambridge, is excellent at revealing the basics. Furthermore, Platt has designed the book with some pages intentionally blank, in order to accommodate topics which are best presented across the left and right pages. This approach presents certain code samples in a contiguous, understandable fashion.

This book raise an interest. Tired man who have read Inside OLE or other boring book may be say that wow~~. Simple but powerful book. This book is really essencial book who want to dig depth OLE/ActiveX