Page #49 (Putting It All Together)

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Summary

In this chapter, we examined various goals that the COM committee had in defining the Interface Definition Language (IDL). We looked at various IDL constructs that are used in defining interfaces and are responsible for generating the marshaling logic. In defining interfaces, we looked at issues such as network efficiency and the ability to work with languages other than C++. We examined the rules of memory allocations and learned how to correctly use various APIs dealing with memory management. Finally, we converted interface definitions defined in the previous chapter from C++ abstract base classes to IDL interfaces.

This chapter covered a reasonable amount of information on IDL. Those wishing to learn more about interface design should read Al Major s book, COM IDL and Interface Design [Maj-99].

In the next chapter, we will take the newly defined interfaces and build our first COM server.

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