In Effective COM, the authors, Don Box, Keith Brown, Tim Ewald, and Chris Sells, offer 50 concrete guidelines for creating COM based applications that are more efficient, robust, and maintainable. Drawn from the authors' extensive practical experience working with and teaching COM, these rules of thumb, pitfalls to avoid, and experience-based pointers will enable you to become a more productive and successful COM programmer.

These guidelines appear under six major headings: the transition from C++ to COM; interfaces, the fundamental element of COM development; implementation issues; the unique concept of apartments; security; and transactions. Throughout this book, the issues unique to the MTS programming model are addressed in detail.

Readers will gain a deeper understanding of COM concepts, capabilities, and drawbacks, and the know-how to employ COM effectively for high quality distributed application development. A supporting Web site, including source code, can be found at http://www.develop.com/effectivecom.

• Readers will benefit from such insight and wisdom as: © Define your interfaces before you define your classes (and do it in IDL) © Design with distribution in mind © Dual interfaces are a hack. Don't require people to implement them © Don't access raw interface pointers across apartment boundaries © Avoid creating threads from an in-process server © Smart Interface Pointers add at least as much complexity as they remove © CoInitializeSecurity is your friend. Learn it, love it, call it © Use fine-grained authentication © Beware exposing object references from the middle of a transaction hierarchy © Don't rely on JIT activation for scalability

Preface.


Shifting from C++ to COM.


Interfaces.


Implementations.


Apartments.


Security.


Transactions.


Epilogue.


About the Authors.


Index.

CORBA  [PTG: AW PROFESSIONAL]   (Computer Science)

Don Box is a leading educator, recognized authority on the Component Object Model (COM), coauthor of the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) specification, and coiner of the term "COM is Love." He recently joined Microsoft as an architect in the Microsoft^® .NET Developer and Platform Evangelism Group.

Earlier in his career, Box cofounded DevelopMentor Inc., a component software think tank aimed at educating developers on the use of the COM, Java, and XML. A popular public speaker, Box is known for engaging audiences around the world, combining deep technical insight with often outrageous stunts.

Keith Brown focuses on application security at Pluralsight, which he cofounded with several other .NET experts to foster a community, develop content, and provide premier training. Keith regularly speaks at conferences, including TechEd and WinDev, and serves as a contributing editor and columnist to MSDN Magazine.

Tim Ewald is a Director of Content at DevelopMentor, a premier developer services company. His research and development work focuses on the design and implementation of scalable systems using component technologies such as COM and Java. Tim has authored or co-authored several DevelopMentor courses, including the MTS and COM+ curriculum. He is also a co-author of Effective COM (Addison-Wesley), a former columnist for DOC and Application Strategies, and a frequent conference speaker. Before joining DevelopMentor, Tim worked as an independent consultant specializing in COM and related technologies.

Chris Sells is a content strategist on the Microsoft MSDN content team. Previously, he was the director of software engineering at DevelopMentor. Chris is the author of Windows Telephony Programming (Addison-Wesley, 1998) and Windows Forms Programming in Visual Basic .NET (Addison-Wesley, 2004), and coauthor of Effective COM (Addison-Wesley, 1999), ATL Internals (Addison-Wesley, 1999), and Essential .NET, Volume 1 (Addison-Wesley, 2003).

In Effective COM, the authors, Don Box, Keith Brown, Tim Ewald, and Chris Sells, offer 50 concrete guidelines for creating COM based applications that are more efficient, robust, and maintainable. Drawn from the authors' extensive practical experience working with and teaching COM, these rules of thumb, pitfalls to avoid, and experience-based pointers will enable you to become a more productive and successful COM programmer.

These guidelines appear under six major headings: the transition from C++ to COM; interfaces, the fundamental element of COM development; implementation issues; the unique concept of apartments; security; and transactions. Throughout this book, the issues unique to the MTS programming model are addressed in detail. Developers will benefit from such insight and wisdom as:

• Define your interfaces before you define your classes (and do it in IDL)
• Design with distribution in mind
• Dual interfaces are a hack. Don't require people to implement them
• Don't access raw interface pointers across apartment boundaries
• Avoid creating threads from an in-process server
• Smart Interface Pointers add at least as much complexity as they remove
• CoInitializeSecurity is your friend. Learn it, love it, call it
• Use fine-grained authentication
• Beware exposing object references from the middle of a transaction hierarchy
• Don't rely on JIT activation for scalability

and much more invaluable advice.

For each guideline, the authors present a succinct summary of the challenge at hand, extensive discussion of their rationale for the advice, and many compilable code examples. Readers will gain a deeper understanding of COM concepts, capabilities, and drawbacks, and the know-how to employ COM effectively for high quality distributed application development. A supporting Web site, including source code, can be found at http://www.develop.com/effectivecom.

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