Essential COM

14 years after publishing, Essential COM is still essential for everyone who wants to fully understand COM technology. .NET replaced COM in many areas, but still, there are many libraries based on COM. Even the latest technologies like Windows Runtime (Metro) or Media Foundation are COM-based APIs.As the book title indicates, Essential COM covers (all) essential parts of COM technology you should know when working with COM. The book is NOT introductory text. In fact, you have to have same basics of COM before reading this book. Some step by step tutorial, or even better Step-by-step book should be considered as prerequisite before reading Box's text.Box tries to explain not just technology itself, but he also presents philosophy that drove designers of COM to design COM as it was designed. The book doesn't contain whole listing of source codes, nor step-by-step examples (showing how to create COM servers - for instance). Instead, there are short snippets of code you can incorporate to your own COM clients or servers (the reason why you need to know how to create COM server from scratch). But if you have basics of COM, the book is the great tool that will extend your knowledge. Especially coverage of apartments (one of the hardest parts of COM) is great. Using this book I filled many gaps. The only thing I don't like are those 'animal' examples. Interfaces like IApe, IDog or IPug are not very intuitive.The last remark. The book is completely valid under Windows 7. I compiled samples (my own, not from companion source) under Visual Studio 2010 for x64 CPU, and there were only minor changes I had to do (ProxyStub DLL for standard marshaler is linked with other LIB and you have to set x64 flag for MIDL compiler).PS: The book doesn't contain explanation of COM support in ATL or MFC. Also #import directive is not covered here.

If you want to learn COM, start here. If you have been using COM but never really learned it, like me, then start here to actually learn about COM. I had been doing so many things wrong. My coworkers had been doing many things wrong. And that is really embarrassing as we should know much better. So read this book.

This is a great book and delivers exactly what the jacket says. It is written for C++ developers and those who want to know details about COM. I would not say it is for the beginner, but there is no reason someone couldn't muscle through it.

It is almost 2006 and I just read this book so I could delve into ATL Internals by Chris Sells. Some computer science books are timeless, and this one definitely qualifies. Don Box did such a great job with this book. It is very insightful and does a great job of explaining how COM works. Almost all of the COM development I did in the pre-.NET era was with Visual Basic, but I did have to use Visual C++ out of necessity once in a while. I wish I had read this book years ago. However, even after the fact, this book is a great read.

It is a MUST-HAVE for Windows System Engineers. Very detailed and clear description about COM, even if the book is a bit old. Advised ++

Approximately 12 years ago I had to learn COM programming from a Microsoft Visual Studio 6, C++ perspective. This book confused me horribly. Now that I've successfully coded and maintained a few COM servers over the years, I still have the perspective that this book could be better at outlining what C++ programmer needs to do to understand and code a COM server. The author typically begins and explanation and then jumps to logical conclusions without explaining how he got from point A to point B. To me it felt a bit like going back to engineering school and hearing a professor say "its intuitively obvious" when they really meant to say "I don't feel like explaining it and really just want you to figure it out on your own as a learning exercise". As others have pointed out, not a good book at all to learn this subject matter. Even as a behind the scenes and legacy maintenance reference, I find Alan Gordon's "The COM and COM+ Programming Primer" much better at outlining what needs to be done and why. Unfortunately a lot of what you need to know about COM from a C++ perspective is mired deeply in registry entries, templates (if you are planning on the ATL route), class factories and syntax that I just did not feel the author did a sufficient job in explaining. Ten years down the road you will forget the syntax and its those basic steps and syntax you will need for reference. Don't bother looking for them in this book. I'd point out specific examples, but I disliked the book so much that it now lives in the local landfill.

Yes it is 2013 and COM technology is almost history. But if you want to make a product with Win32 dll that needs to be binary compatible with products built using different compilers without COM then books explains you very well on how to do it in the very first chapter of Why COM?

The biggest problem I've had with this book is that the examples are incomplete. I am used to learning by starting with a basic program and implementing more and more features of the api step by step. In this I can ensure I have mastered the basic concepts before moving on. Unfortunetly this book does not use this technic. Although it starts with the basics and progresses, it does not have working examples of just the basic implementation. Therefore if you are confused by a particular section that does not have much practical code, then you are at a loss and will not be able to move on through the book since subsequent sections will be building upon the one that you may have stumbled on. Code snippets are just not enough for me to grasps the subject. There is a complete example downloadable from the book's website, but the example implements all of the advanced features, which is far to overwhelming for a COM novice such as myself.

A distanza di anni, questo è ancora un ottimo testo per studiare COM nei dettagli e per capirne la "filosofia".Il primo capitolo è ottimo nello spiegare le motivazioni che sono alla base di COM, e ne consiglio la lettura ad ogni programmatore che voglia capire questa tecnologia.Lo sviluppo con COM viene semplificato molto dall'uso di framework come ATL, ma capire i fondamenti di COM senza l'ausilio di framework esterni rappresenta un passaggio intellettuale importante.

Has substantial material on OLE, which is what I was searching for, in a book on COM model.

Came on time and in good condition.

As I actually am searching a Delphi book on the subject I had to send the book back because this book deals the subject com-services only in C++. This language is to different from Delphi to be of use to me.

Excellent Book