I need to say, "What a well-used book". I started to say, well written, but who cares if it was well written. What really matters before you buy the book is if you will get some good use out if it. If, by use you mean, you will have dog-eared pages, highlights out the kazoo, and sticky-notes in all the margins, then the answer is a resounding YES! By the way, I do think it was written well, but I am not an English major. I am a working ASP programmer, trying to learn COM for ASP.

If you have Visual Basic (5 or later) running, and know a little bit about it, and are maybe a little bit past the beginning stage of ASP (2 or later) programming, then this book would really help you out, as it did me.

The first part of the book was written for an ASP programmer, just starting to use components. It answers those all-important beginning questions like: What is a component? In addition, why do we need them? Moreover, what do they do?

Part I The first part of the book has nine chapters, deals with everything the nitty gritty details a starting COM programmer needs to know. It begins with "What is COM", and it's interfaces, and the host environments. It explains that most ASP sites do real work and are not just siting around looking pretty; they deal with data through ADO and COM. This book has prepared to build your first component in just a short while. It explains everything you need to have and do. I was so happy to get my first component working.

This book goes into the basics of Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS). This book explains better than the big MTS book I have, and never could quite make it through. It explains in depth about transactions, scalability, and resources. I work in a small shop, but try to look hard at large NT/IIS/ASP sites, that I will be working for some day, and try to learn from them. Before going into the MTS stuff, it really goings into explaining n-tier in laymen's terms. I am also starting to use the MS Message Queue. How dumb could I have been? A year and half ago, I thought it was another way of doing email, or SMTP stuff, so I dismissed it. That was a bad move on my part. What I now know is that it is the systems are talking to each other. "Yes, I got that message, did you get mine about the transaction failing?" I know I've simplified it and it's not exactly like that, but you've only got a few minutes for me to tell you why, if you are like me, you should look at this stuff. The book also later explains ADSI, which I still do not need, but at least I now know more about it.

Part II The second part of the book is for Visual C++ people, you know, those real geeks, which really understand the deep levels of code, and make stuff harder than they need to. I thought I would not get much out of it, but I was dead wrong. There are five in-depth chapters in the second part of the book, which break all the rules you just learned in the first part, well not really. I still use the first part since that is what really suited me.

I really learned a lot more about MTS, and the Active Template library, and more about programming logic, and the MS OLE DB templates. I also learned more about VC++. You know, the stuff that you put off, and say that you've been meaning too, just haven't gotten around to it, been very busy just trying to keep up with my little world.

The book also has a great two-chapter "case study" on XML. It uses ASP, components, and XML, to "solve" a document management problem. That is why we are paid the big bucks to solve problems, using whatever tools we need.

The last part of this book, as in all great Wrox computer books, has a couple of appendices. The ASP object model, and the ADO object model, and library references for the MTS, and Message Queue Objects. The last one was about COM and the registry.

My final comments are, that out of the at least five other basic COM books I have really examined, this is the best. I really read it, did the examples, and learned from it. Some of the books I look at, I think, "Yes, I could use this, or learn from it", but I never do. The book needs to pull you in, like Beginning Components for ASP does. The two main authors, Richard Anderson and Simon Robinson, each did a great job on their sections, and Alex Homer, helped tie it all together and smooth it out. I generally like most books of which Alex has part. I think you will like and use this book as much as I did.