ATL Internals (The Addison-Wesley Object Technology Series) (Paperback)

by Brent E. Rector (Author), Chris Sells (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Written for the advanced C++ programmer, ATL Internals reveals the inner workings of the Active Template Library (ATL), the toolkit of choice for building today's lightweight Internet and server components.

The book begins with a tour of the ATL code generated by the Microsoft Visual C++ 6 AppWizard. The authors introduce fundamental ATL programming issues here, but they do not provide a general introduction to COM or ATL; they assume that readers have a good deal of background in both C++ and COM.

The book focuses on the extremely useful ATL support classes for managing strings (BSTRs), variants, and smart pointers. It covers the classes that help instantiate COM components (and examines support for different threading models and "creator" classes). The guide continues with object internals--covering object maps and the classes used to manage them--and interfaces, including aggregates and various interface design options. Information on ATL's support for persistence, which lets objects save and restore their state; on how ATL supports basic containers; and on interfaces that work with the Standard Template Library (STL) in C++ is well done.

Later sections explain how to work with windows and ActiveX controls. After some material on events (and connection points), the authors reveal ATL support for basic window operations, including dialogs. For building a custom ActiveX control, the authors provide an excellent example of a nicely functional visual control. (This code will prove invaluable since it illustrates all the essentials of ATL component programming.) --Richard Dragan

Review
"ATL Internals is definitely a book worth having (and reading) if you are serious about ATL 3.0. ... the number one resource they will continuously find themselves referring to for gaining the true mastery of every ATL-related topic and to rule out the situations not clearly addressed by the official documentation.... if you have room for only one on your desk at the office, this is the right one to always keep at hand." -- Davide Marcato, Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

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A bit late in hitting the shelves, ATL Internals is definitely a book worth having (and reading) if you are serious about ATL 3.0. Compared to its most direct competitor, Professional ATL COM Programming, this book is less example-driven and spends less time indoctrinating the reader on the theory of COM or on general utilization of ATL in working scenarios. Which of the two is the best? Professional ATL COM Programming better fits the needs of the ATL developers that have a somewhat incomplete knowledge of COM and seek a pragmatic, full-of-examples path to ATL proficiency. But ATL Internals is the number one resource they will continuously find themselves referring to for gaining true mastery of every ATL-related topic and to rule out the situations not clearly addressed by the official documentation. --Davide Marcato, Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books -- Dr. Dobb's Electronic Review of Computer Books

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Product Details

• Paperback: 656 pages
• Publisher: Addison-Wesley Professional (March 31, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0201695898
• ISBN-13: 978-0201695892
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #816,063 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't do ATL or COM without it, May 5, 2002

By	The Heavy Artillery (Tampa, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This is simply one book that you do not want to be without when designing and implementing a COM project. I purchased the book after I found myself in my first COM project and without any coworkers with any experience in this area. As a comment, I've also rummaged around the Internet and purchase ...books in the effort to come up to speed as quickly as I can. ATL Internals is the best source of data on ATL that I've found so far.

ATL Internals not only discusses ATL but also does and excellent job discussing COM's theory of operation and how a Win32 OS supports COM.

As a warning, however, ATL Internals isn't the only book that you need on a COM project because it is specialized on ATL (and on COM in general). While ATL is useful it is not the only thing that you will have to deal with on a COM project. You will probably need to work with IDL files and for that I can unequivocally recommend "Essential IDL" by Martin Gudgin.

ATL Internals accomplishes several things well; I will try to describe the most valuable aspects of this book. One of the best properties of this book is that it is thorough. It covers ATL in depth.

The following is a partial list of the material in ATL Internals:

1) ATL Internals covers using the wizards and explains how to proceed beyond the point where the wizards quit.
2) A though discussion of ATL facilities. For example: CComPtr (a COM smart pointer), CComBSTR (a class wrapped around the error-prone BSTR datatype) classes are covered in detail. The text conversion macros are completely covered here. In other books and on the internet I saw code examples that used them but will little explantion.
3) Bug warnings, both your (potential) bugs and bugs within ATL. The authors point out the buggy parts of ATL and they invest the necessary effort to warn out about aspects of ATL that, if naively used, create bugs. Numerous pages are dedicated to showing both how to correctly use certain hazardous parts of ATL as well as examples of buggy code. Depreciated techniques are also described for completeness.
4) Discussion and examples of various COM issues, including threading issues, connection points, the Service Control manager (SCM)and so on.
5) Detailed discussion of the numerous macros that Microsoft uses to conceal substantial code, (e.g. BEGIN_OBJECT_MAP, COM_INTERFACE_ENTRY_IMPL, etc.)
6) One of the appendixes shows a cross reference between ATL classes and header file names. This was a welcome convenience (yes I could have greped, but this is quicker)

ATL Internals not only has great content but it is written in a very readable style. The typeset is easy to read and the diagrams are well done.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Simply the best! Five stars, no doubts!, October 10, 1999

By	Stan Danilov (Dublin, Ireland (born in Russia)) - See all my reviews

"ATL INTERNALS" is a superb source of information about how ATL works. If you want to be a pro in ATL then go and buy it.

I read it TWICE. Never before anything like that ever happened to me!

Well done, lads! Thanks!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very professional book, August 16, 1999

By A Customer

This book covers ATL Internals in a very professional and essential way.I would recommend to read this book only after dealing with simple COM objects , and getting familiar with this technology. I read it after i have finished to read "Inside COM (MS press )" and it is a good order. This book is very recommended for professional programmers.