Features
- Cover Type: Paperback with 222 pages
- Published by: Addison-Wesley Professional December 1998
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0201379686
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0201379686
-
Book Dimensions:
9.2 x 7.3 x 0.5 inches
- Weighs: 8 ounces
Product Review
Effective COM opens with a chapter devoted to the migration from C++ to COM programming, presenting five "attitude shifts" that C++ coders need to undergo to program successfully with COM. It starts with a discussion of defining interfaces in the Interface Definition Language (IDL), and then moves on to a discussion of the unique distribution challenges of COM-based systems. The authors also discuss other differences, such as exception calls.
The next chapter presents tips pertaining to the all-important interfaces in COM. Both the big picture and some precise details are covered to help you implement your interfaces safely, as well as the implementations and the particular challenges that COM presents. The authors emphasize "defensive coding"--pointing out dangerous assumptions and offering suggestions for producing reliable components.
Apartments, security, and transaction management are addressed in succeeding chapters. As with the previous topics, they are handled via a series of specific tips and suggestions. If you're new to COM programming, you should read some more introductory texts first, but if you've already experienced your baptism by fire into the subject, this title can help ease future pain.
--Stephen Plain
Dr. Dobb's Journal
It is arguable that the tardiness showed by the industry in endorsing the COM message and investing in it has at least part of its motivations in the lack of explanatory and comprehensive documentation on the foundations (conceptual and implementative) of the model. Now that the primary hole has been more or less filled by a decent amount of quality literature, including most notably
Essential COM, authored by one of the coauthors of this text and reviewed by
DDJ's ERCB some months ago, many engineers in the industry are struggling to apply the newly digested paradigm to everyday
software projects, often facing unexpected difficulties and uncertainties. The problem lies in the point I made earlier: Many developers have got in touch with COM/MTS and know its theory reasonably well, but they are stuck in the second part of the learning curve -- the one that extends from the theoretical knowledge up to the actual hands-on expertise, the one required to effectively build COM-based systems of nontrivial dimension.
The COM universe is so extremely vast and the paradigm shift so big that it is often very daunting to get acquainted and secure working with it, either as architectural designers or hardcore implementers.
When you find yourself in this situation, any reliable source of suggestions, proven guidelines, and exhaustive answers to recurring doubts would greatly help understand and overcome the many nontrivial issues. That's where
Effective COM fits right in. The book can be thought of as a distilled dispenser of 50 rules-of-thumb and clearly explained guidelines stemming from the combined wisdom amassed by the four coauthors in many years of real-world experience and research. Read more--
Davide Marcato, Dr. Dobb's Journal
Reader Reviews
Although useful for revision in certain aspects (e.g. threading issues) of such a rich subject the book is, on the whole, weak. It presents an overly simplistic discussion of the problems of dual interfaces (of which there are many) and a nauseating prosyletisation of the much flawed technology MTS. The section on COM security makes a decent attempt at improving the knowledge of the reader, but fails as the writing is obtuse and laboured. Save your money, read the COM specification, and experiment. You'll gain a much deeper understanding than that speciously portrayed here.
Comment | |
(Report this)
Search for books at
