"For programmers, by programmers" could be the motto of Don Box's new box "Essential COM", Addison Wesley; ISBN: 0201634465. Don teaches the reader COM through shared experiences with C++ and API programming. For this reason it is best to have these shared experiences; make sure you are a C++ programmer before picking up this book. Typical of Addison Wesley this book is a cut above the rest with textbook style writing, excellent C++ examples, and great diagrams.
Don begins with an explanation of COM from a programmer's perspective, what are the interfaces currently available, why they don't work, and why to use COM. He then very nicely, guides you through the designing of alternative interface and tells you this is COM. From there he instructs you how to write the low-level interfaces to COM using C++. He covers IDL syntax and semantics very well, since this is a new subject there are few books that do cover it well and this is one of them. The rest of the book, is deep down COM, things only the hard-core COM programmer would want to know, a layer where may of the programming tools like Visual Studio encapsulate for the common Joe.
Don's book is an excellent choice for your bookshelf, if you are a C++ programmer and need to know the deep down of COM programming. Especially, if you are looking for great programming examples and a discussion of performance and pitfalls at that level.
This article is primarily for Active Server Pages (ASP) developers who would like to take their ASP skills a step further. By bundling ASP code into server-side components, developers not only increase Visual Basic functionality and ASP speed, but also find a marvelous way to encapsulate and protect their ASP source code. [Read This Article][Top]
Even though Delphi is been around for quite sometime, it has not become as popular as it should have become for building Active Server Pages (ASP) components. This is remarkable considering Delphi’s very good support for building COM objects. [Read This Article][Top]
A simple example of creating a Active Server component in MSVC 4.2 using the Active Template Library 1.1. Included in the issue is the source code and step by step instructions. [Read This Article][Top]
Part one of a four-part series on Active Server component. A simple example of creating a Active Server Component in MSVC 4.2 using the Active Template Library 2.0. Included in this issue is the source code and step by step instructions. [Read This Article][Top]
Part two of a four-part series on Active Server components. In this issue 15 Seconds discuss how to write and debug an Active Server object that writes to the Event Log. Included in the issue is the source code and step by step instructions. This issue uses MSVC 4.2 and ATL 2.0 [Read This Article][Top]
