Chapter 1 -- An Overview of COM

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Chapter 1

So, one millennium's ended and another's just begun. Just how much impact did the changeover have on your life as a professional developer? Sure, when the clocks all ticked zero, there were a few hiccups here and there. A few outdated systems had to be taken to their final resting places. But our industry as a whole didn't experience the doomsday scenarios predicted in the media. This was especially true for those of us who build applications based on operating systems and development tools created within the last decade. It's pretty humorous when you look back on it all. Rumors of the death of your company's information system were obviously greatly exaggerated.

Then again, does the press really ever know what's going on in our industry? They missed the fact that it was a century bug and not really a millennium bug. The problem was rooted in the use of two-character dates instead of four-character dates. If the human race had had the same technology 100 years earlier, we would have faced all the same issues on New Year's Eve of 1899. However, "millennium bug" sounded so much more sensational and, consequently, sold more newspapers and magazines.

Remember a few years back when the press predicted that everything would be rewritten in Java, including the United States Constitution and the Magna Carta? Now the Java buzz has subsided and we see Java for what it is—a young and promising language with its share of strengths and weaknesses. It didn't take the industry by storm. It's a language that's usable in some situations but unsuitable in others.

Now everybody's talking about XML as the cure-all technology. I know that as XML matures, we'll find more and more uses for it. It will solve lots of problems that are very hard and very real. But XML will never replace technologies such as COM, Corba, and Java, as many people have suggested. It's important that we keep all these new technologies in perspective. It's not healthy to get overly excited about a technology that might solve all your problems a few years down the road when you have to ship an application in the next few months.



Programming Distributed Applications with COM+ and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0
Programming Distributed Applications with Com and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 (Programming/Visual Basic)
ISBN: 1572319615
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2000
Pages: 70
Authors: Ted Pattison

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