Customer Reviews

Programming Distributed Applications with Com and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (Programming/Visual Basic)

5 star:		(48)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

After reading all those glowing reviews I bought this book. What I found is: 1. No sample code. 2. The theories and ideas are floating all over without providing an understanding what it is all about. 3. The first five chapters you can skip. I guess that some VB programmers want to prove that they are not "naive VB programmers".

I browsed through the reviews couple of days ago and today again. I was unpleasently suprised that some of the bad reviews disapeared and were replaced with good reviews. Is this a new policy of Amazon.com to entice potential customers to buy ths book? I was ready to buy this book, but I won't buy it now!

According to the title, this book focuses on COM in Visual Basic, but the author spends many pages using Java to illustrate his points. I am a learn-by-example programmer, and this book is seriously lacking in examples. He refers to the "naieve VB programmer" who understands little about the interface between the COM object and Windows. Well, I'm proud to say that I am one of those "naieve VB programmers" who cares little about the behind-the-scenes operations, and just wants to know "How do I do X ?" I think I'm going to return this book and pick up "Distributed COM Application Development Using Visual Basic 6.0" by Jim Maloney. This is the second time I've been let down by Microsoft Press.

Although it says 'Visual Basic' in the title, the author keeps telling you about COM on a C++ basis and then almost at the end of each chapter tells how VB maps to that.

There is VERY little amount of sample code. Too much theory and the ideas keep floating around as the author tries to go into core detail and the VB programmer can not possibly visualize THAT much when COM is in fact a C++ thing at the bottom.

I cant say the book is horrible. It gives an impression of what interfaces are, how to program them with VB, but yet, fails to give enough real world examples to prove the interfaces are necessary.

Overall, I'd prefer not to have bought this book but another one with more examples, more about MTS programming.

On the other hand, I wouldnt say no to this book if it was 10$ or free :)

More of esoterica of COM than real COM. How can anyone believe that he gained anything after reading this? My solace is in having picked up some computer buzzwords.

I had no idea about COM and this book helped me a lot to get me started. You should be familiar with object-oriented programming no matter C++, JAVA or Visual Basic. It explains how COM works and describes its threading model. This book also contains few chapters on MTS environment showing how life could be easier with MTS instead of writing complex code to deal with issues such as connection management, thread pooling, and transaction monitoring.

I don't know why Ted Pattison named this book "Programming Distributed Apps with COM and Microsoft VB 6", of course the author provided few sample code in VB but don't count on that to start developing COM components. Get the "Fitch & Mather" sample code from Microsoft site and study it, that would help be sure of that.

Even if you are a COM programmer you will still find a lot of tips to optimize your code. I've read this book many times and each time I find few things that helps me. IT'S A MUST for all COM programmers.

I would also recommend:

"Creating Lightweight Components with ATL". With these two books and some coding you will master COM and ATL.

"Inside COM+ Base Services" should be your next book if you want to continue, it will take you to the next stage of evolution of the COM programming model.

Enjoy it

It appears the author has spent much of his recent time on the road teaching instead of coding. If you want to sit around with your fellow programmers and discuss the esoterica then this is the book for you. However, if you want to learn COM then I would look elsewhere.

Probably a two-and-a-half, but I couldn't get any change. It would be amazing to this reviewer how anyone could walk away after reading this book and believe that they have gained anything but the most cursory and scattered explanation of what underlies VB ActiveX DLLs and EXEs (ActiveX Controls not covered). Only the most superficial details, if any at all, are presented concerning virtual base classes, class factories, proxies, or stubs. The scattered mini-listings of IDL and the attempts at explaining IDispatch and dual interfaces surely leave the COM ignorant thinking that they have arrived in the middle of a bad movie. Perhaps one can take solace in having picked up some computer buzz words. This book does not discriminate against VB programmers in providing mystical explanations. Even for a person steeped in C++/Win32 the explanations are simply inadequate. For example take the notion of apartments. The author starts mildly enough with good old Win32 processes and threads and then jumps into an admittedly artificial COM construct called an apartment. If there is a coherent tie-in to processes and threads it is undetectable to this reviewer. Does it mean something to say that a thread "enters" an apartment? Is a thread a little man? Not one line of sample code is presented. Not one underlying Win32 API call that COM may use is detailed. This is definitely explanation light. But it can be said that the book is not without merit. It is just not what it purports to be. The actual use of Implements, TypeOf, & CreateObject keywords is shown and discussed. The book is also somewhat informative on N-tier business solutions using MTS. The author states that his background in C++ and COM is of very recent vintage. Further, he learned at the right hand of a well-known COM guru. A suggestion for the next book. Take the draft on the road and find out what real-world programmers can really learn from the book. What gurus think of a book is mostly useless.

Unlike many COM books out there, this one is absolutely CONCRETE TO THE CORE. Don't let the 300 pages of this book fool you in thinking that it is thin in materials. 300 pages of this book get straight to point of COM and its fundumemtals. This book is like taking other somewhat 600 pages COM books and run them through a mumble-jumble filter. What you then end with is 300 pages of pure juicy materials, all the essensials of COM. There were many chapters in the book where I found myself reading them over twice because they answer some of the questions on COM which I could not find from other books. This book is an excellent resource to learn how to use COM correctly. COM is not an easy thing to master, even for an experience programmer. The reason being is because COM is developed mostly on methodology. And in order to use COM correctly, you really need to understand how it works skin-deep, not just from the syntaxing. Ted Pattison does an excellent job in 'preaching' COM throughout his book, and I strongly recommend this book to those who are wanting to believe in COM.

I thought this book was great. I've working with VB for 5 years and developing COM components in VB for 2 years. Did you ever wonder what really goes on when you build COM components in VB? Do you want a clear understanding about how COM really works? If not, this book is not for you.

The author explains COM programming in a very clear way. I found the book very easy to read and I rarely feel that way about computer books. I don't think this book is for total VB novices that have never created a COM component in VB. This book does not have many examples either. If you are looking for a strictly "how to" book, this is not for you. But, if Visual Basic is you're bread and butter this book is a must read. A little familiarity with C++ would also be helpful to get the most out of this book.