Waite Group's COM/DCOM Primer Plus [Illustrated] [Paperback]

John Cadman (Author), Chris Corry (Editor), Waite Group (Corporate Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 20, 1998 | Series: The Waite Group

Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM) is a specification for developing software components that can be dynamically interchanged. DCOM is a technology that enables software components to communicate directly with each other across network and the Internet.

Product Details

• Paperback: 550 pages
• Publisher: Pearson Waite Group (November 20, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0672314924
• ISBN-13: 978-0672314926
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,334,060 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An OK introduction to COM, May 23, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Waite Group's COM/DCOM Primer Plus (Paperback)

I liked the book because it gave a good overview of COM/DCOM technologies. It really is the most friendly introduction to COM development. Since the title indicates this book is a primer, I wasn't expecting anything more. I didn't regret purchasing the book, and I would probably recommend it to someone brand new to COM development.

Having said that, it wasn't the best COM development book I've read, primarily because there was a lot of unnecessary material to wade through. For example, chapter 2 starts by explaining basic C++ object-oriented topics such as classes and inheritance. Presumably the reader is already familiar with these simple concepts, and isn't trying to learn C++ with this book. I'm new to C++ and even I found these topics unnecessary. Since the author explores COM via MFC, the reader never gets a clear understanding of COM itself. More difficult topics, like aggregation, aren't explained at all, but are left to MFC to implement behind the scenes. The main sample program is a big MFC program, which means you have to wade through pages of MFC code to understanding the few lines of COM-specific code. The chapter on multithreading is worthless. It consists of a series of terse descriptions of multithread API calls, followed by a couple of pages of unexplained, uncommented code which use the calls.

Inside COM by Dale Rogerson is a better intro to COM programming, but doesn't cover the breadth of material this book does.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fair Into to COM, July 14, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Waite Group's COM/DCOM Primer Plus (Paperback)

Problems with book:

1) Book should've mentioned up front they were focussing on COM/DCOM with MFC support. Focuses heavily on the MFC side of COM/DCOM, which we do not use.

2) Treatment of ATL does not exploit all the work VC6 can do for you.

3) Book spends two chapters covering C++ and OOD, which they expect you to already know at anyways. Why not omit those chapters and spend more time talking about what the book truly is about.

However, this book did give me a good overview of COM/DCOM. Having read Inside COM and looked at a few others, this book left out a great deal. A good intro book but be sure to have Inside COM side by side with this one.

The examples had too much MFC/GUI code. Should focus on COM rather than explaining how MFC works. They also omit how to set up your projects in VC6. VC6 can do a lot of the prework ahead for you and they consistently failed to utilize it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Leaves out important code / project settings, July 19, 1999

By 

T. Viken (Norway) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Waite Group's COM/DCOM Primer Plus (Paperback)

I must admit I have just read the 5 first chapters these last 3 days and I feel I've gained a deeper understanding of COM. - However the authors does not state how to set up the VC++ project settings to get the code to work. - I've been fighting of Linker errors most of the time since I started typing in the code. It may be I am not proficient enough in VC++ but with a little help from the book I could be focusing on COM instead of VC++ quirks.

Some of the code included <iostream> and <string> libraries but did not have "using namespace std" in the printed code. Since I have just been studying namespaces this was not the biggest problem for me.

I went to www.mcp.com to fetch updates but I was very dissapointed that there was no updates there.

Even though I feel that the book has allready given me more in depth insight in COM I am dissapointed that I have to spend a lot of time browsing the CD-project code to see what made the samples work.