Chapter 15 -- A COM Overview

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Chapter 15

You probably can't overestimate the importance of COM+ to you as a developer of Microsoft Windows DNA applications. In time, COM+ will penetrate into most of the things you do as a developer of Windows applications in general and Windows DNA applications in particular. As we write this, no development tools exist that take full advantage of COM+, but if you use any of Microsoft's tools, odds are the next version will. This is only natural because COM+ is at the very center of Microsoft's strategy for supplying you, the developer, with tools and platforms for the development of elegant, scalable, distributed, and advanced applications.

MTS, described in the previous chapter, is now an integral part of COM+ Component Services. This chapter is an overview of COM+ from the perspective of an MTS developer, and it sets COM+ Component Services, described in the next major section in this chapter, in sharp focus. We need to focus because COM+ is a huge subject. Guy and Henry Eddon wrote Inside COM+ Base Services (Microsoft Press, 1999), a moderately large book. It's a great book, and we don't hesitate to recommend it. But we want you very much to know that the title doesn't lie; the book is almost exclusively about the base COM+ services and includes only a few pages about COM+ Component Services.

Even though COM+ is such an enormous subject, it's our job to give you an overview of its component services in the space offered by a short chapter. There's a limit to what we can tell you in such a space, so we'll have to steer you elsewhere for more information. At the time of writing, we know of three good sources for information about COM+, and here they are:

• Inside COM+ Base Services, by Guy and Henry Eddon. We've already mentioned this book, and we recommend it highly for detailed information about the base services of COM+.
• Understanding COM+, by David S. Platt (Microsoft Press, 1999). This book is considerably smaller than Inside COM+ Base Services; it's an overview of COM+ Component Services. But there's one thing you must understand when reading Understanding COM+. Platt wrote it before Microsoft made its final decisions concerning what COM+ 1.0 should include, and some of the features described in the book didn't make it into the final version of COM+ 1.0.
• The obvious place for more information about COM+ is Microsoft's own Web site. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/com/tech/complus.asp for an enormous amount of information about COM+.