Designing Solutions with COM+ Technologies - Softcover

Microsoft Corporation, -

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0735611270 ISBN 13: 9780735611276

Publisher: Microsoft Press, 2000

Synopsis

Many developers encounter COM+ issues that have already been worked through by other developers. This book documents these common COM+ design and implementation issues, gives you proven ways of solving them, and presents practical technical advice and information to help you avoid COM+ pitfalls. It offers a wealth of design patterns, best practices for implementation, explanations of how the latest COM+ services work, plus in-depth analyses of performance trade-offs between competing COM+ solutions—all so that you can profit from the experience of those who have been successful in the COM+ development environment in enterprise projects across various industries. It also gives you extensive code samples in text and on the companion CD-ROM in Microsoft Visual C++ and Visual Basic. Packed with problem-solving insights, this book covers these topics:

• COM+ fundamentals: Handling errors properly to enhance the maintainability of your software; employing smart pointers to improve robustness; understanding string details in C++ and international development; making the most of COM+ concurrency; learning to create, call, and implement COM+ objects in interoperable development environments.
• Architectural patterns and solutions: Taking advantage of the Active Template Library (ATL) to achieve reuse through multiple inheritance; building efficient cross-platform data-transformation services; understanding marshal-by-value implementations in C++ and Visual Basic; mastering COM+ reference-cycle management; using generic programming and the Standard Template Library (STL) in the COM+ realm.
• COM+ in the enterprise: Architecting business systems with a COM+ four-tier business-object application pattern; designing solutions with the Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); building massively scalable systems with Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS); understanding data access in the COM+ age.

About this title

Review

The Component Object Model (COM+) design is Microsoft's specification for inter-operable software units written in multiple languages. It's an ideal framework in which to create reusable nuggets of software that help solve multiple business problems. As adaptability and reusability are the cornerstones of patterned software architecture, as well, the two concepts fit together almost exactly. That's the core premise behind Designing Solutions with COM+ Technologies. The book recognises the fact that no matter what problem you have on hand, other people have probably solved it or something like it already and there's no reason for you to expend undue effort on it. About a third of this book contains statements of architectural problems and COM+ solutions to them, usually in C++. It's manna for true believers in object orientation who want to get the most out of COM+.

In addition to the patterns, the authors have included a COM+ tutorial in their compilation. It isn't as valuable as the patterns, but it provides valuable explanations of some of the newer and more obscure aspects of the environment. The explanations of threads and other concurrency strategies are particularly nice, as is a late section on COM+ as an infrastructure for scalable, distributed software. Read this book--assuming you have a handle on the basics of COM+--for its design patterns and learn from their implementations. If you're new to COM+, you'll benefit by preceding your perusal of this volume with a look at Don Box's Essential COM, which (despite its age) is perhaps the best "learn COM" book around. --David Wall

Topics covered: The latest Component Object Model (COM+) specification, interpreted as an environment in which to create reusable and adaptable patterns. After some introductory material on COM+ fundamentals (including smart pointers, concurrency and the various implementation environments), the authors get to the patterns. These cover streams, persistence, marshal-by-value and reference-cycle management. A section deals with COM+ as it relates to Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP).

Edition details

• Publisher: Microsoft Press
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0735611270
• ISBN 13: 9780735611276
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 928