Programming Distributed Applications with COM+ and Microsoft Visual Basic (DV-MPS Programming) [Paperback]

Ted Pattison (Author)

Book Description

Series: DV-MPS Programming | Publication Date: June 1, 2000

This astute reference demystifies the underlying complexities of the Component Object Model (COM) -- explaining how to use the significant COM-based capabilities in Visual Basic 6.0 to create multitier solutions that scale for thousands of users. The best-selling first edition of this book has been fully updated to cover COM+ 1.0, the distributed application framework built into Windows 2000. Developers learn how to share resources such as threads, memory, and poolable objects in a COM+ application; exploit transactional programming techniques for high throughput and low response time; port Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) applications to COM+ and Windows 2000; and build robust, secure Web-based solutions.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Ted Pattison is an author, instructor and co-founder of Critical Path Training (www.CriticalPathTraining.com), a company dedicated to education on SharePoint technologies. For the last five years, Ted has worked with Microsoft’s Developer Platform Evangelism group researching and authoring SharePoint training materials for early adopters. Ted started working with SharePoint 2010 in August of 2008, and since that time, has led a series of training classes in which he has already taught hundreds of professional developers how to get started building custom business solutions using the SharePoint 2010 platform.

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: Microsoft Press; 2nd edition (June 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 073561010X
• ISBN-13: 978-0735610101
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.6 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,070,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Ted Pattison is an author, instructor and co-founder of Critical Path Training (www.CriticalPathTraining.com), a company dedicated to education on SharePoint technologies. For the last five years Ted has worked with Microsoft's Developer Platform Evangelism group researching and authoring SharePoint training material for early adopters. Ted started working with SharePoint 2010 in August of 2008 and since that time has led a series of training classes in which he has already taught hundreds of professional developers how to get started building custom business solutions using the SharePoint 2010 platform.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE authoritative text on VB/COM+, August 13, 2000

By 

Christopher Benson (Atlanta) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Programming Distributed Applications with COM+ and Microsoft Visual Basic (DV-MPS Programming) (Paperback)

This is not a book to learn VB from. It is not intended as an introductory text for beginners. However, once you've become a fairly proficient VB programmer, there is no better book on the market to help you become a great VB programmer.

This book is to VB/COM+ what Kernighan and Ritchie's book "The C Programming Language" was to C. It is THE authoritative text on best programming practices for VB and COM+.

It is not an easy read, but it is packed with more valuable insight per page than any other VB book on the market. I should know because as a professional developer I own a lot of them. It is more "informationally dense" than any other 10 VB books that I own. Beginners and entry-level programmers will probably find it mundane, boring, and esoteric. However, advanced-level VB programmers will find it very informative and quite interesting - at times even captivating as you discover new ways of thinking about VB and the way you program. Just one hint... Don't read too much at one time or your brain will melt. Read a little, think about it, absorb it. Read a little more, think about it, absorb it. Over time, read it all, from cover to cover.

If you are just looking for a book with lots of code examples that you can cut and paste into your own real-world applications, then look elsewhere. There are many sophisticated programming concepts that Pattison tries to convey to the reader. To accomplish this, he bases his code examples on a very simplistic "Dog object". The idea is to teach difficult concepts in the simplest possible manner, and I think he pulls it off rather well. This is an "idea book" rather than a "code example book".

After providing an overview of COM+, Pattison delves into interface-based programming with topics such as user-defined interfaces and both types of inheritance - interface and implementation. Then he hits the fundamentals of COM, addressing Type Libraries and IDL, VB/COM mapping, object activation and the SCM, direct vTable binding through the IUnknown interface vs. late binding through automation's IDispatch interface, the use of dual interfaces, and marshalling. Just the chapters on interface-based programming and COM alone make this book worth purchasing, but Pattison has barely started.

He goes on to discuss the finer points of building and designing servers (DLLs), from design issues to error-raising, the versioning of components in COM, and the creation of user-defined interfaces. After going through the ins and outs of working with configured COM+ components and the sharing of resources within a COM+ application, he talks extensively about COM+ transactions and the many considerations of creating components for IIS and ASP. He finishes up with the topics of asynchonous messaging, COM+ security, and the design of scalable applications.

Like I said before, this book is informationally dense. As a professional Internet developer and architect that works for one of Atlanta's top technology consulting firms, it is the only VB book I own that I consider invaluable and to which I refer repeatedly. Fortunately it comes with a complete ebook version of the text that I keep installed on my laptop. I highly recommend this book to good VB/COM+ programmers that want to become great VB/COM+ programmers.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Helpful COM+ info from a VB perspective, November 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Programming Distributed Applications with COM+ and Microsoft Visual Basic (DV-MPS Programming) (Paperback)

I found the book invaluable. Having read quite a bit on COM and written COM components in both C++ and VB, I can understand why some readers say that the book contains COM(+) material they've read elsewhere. However, the purpose of this book as I understand it isn't to say anything new about COM, it is to set COM+ in the context of VB and discuss design considerations in that light. Want to understand why VB can't object pool the way your C++ component can? Want to know how VB hides the interface-handling plumbing of COM? Want to understand why VB's method of adding a new method can retain binary compatibility but still break an existing client (OK, you might need some knowledge base help on that)? Want some design tips on creating VB components that will be used by scripting clients? Then this is the book for you. Bottom line, this book actually helped me solve actual problems on real projects involving VB COM+ development.

41 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent value, August 7, 2000

By 

Roberto Salvadorie (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Programming Distributed Applications with COM+ and Microsoft Visual Basic (DV-MPS Programming) (Paperback)

I found the book to be pretty mundane, slightly boring rehash of the first edition. But judging from the other reviewers, it is just right for most of today's programmers.