Chapter 18: An Introduction to COM

Overview

To create a UMDF driver, you must use a number of COM objects that belong to the UMDF runtime and implement a number of COM-based callback objects. Although COM-based applications have a reputation for being large, complex, and difficult to implement, much of this complexity is imposed by the COM runtime and the requirements of applications; it is not intrinsic to COM.

UMDF uses only the essential core of the COM programming model-and does not use the COM runtime-which keeps UMDF drivers lightweight and relatively easy to implement. This chapter provides a basic introduction to using and implementing COM objects, as required by UMDF. It is especially intended for kernel-mode driver developers with limited COM experience.

For this chapter, you need …	From …
Tools and files
Wudfddi.idl	%wdk%\BuildNumber\inc\wdf\umdf\VersionNumber
References
"Component Object Model" on MSDN	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79770
Inside COM from Microsoft Press	http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=79771