COM Specification

[JOLESEN]

I have been searching for the COM specification, and only found a DRAFT specification from Microsoft 1995.

Is this 'the one and only' specifcation ?

If yes : How come Microsoft never promoted the document to FINAL or similar ?

Any other documents on the net you can recommend to a newbie ?

/JOlesen

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

Is this where you got your info from?

http://www.microsoft.com/com/resources/comdocs.asp

 

[JOLESEN]

Yes, I got it from Microsoft, and I still wonder about the age of the document and I wonder even more about the DRAFT version.
/JOlesen

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

You could look at

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dncomg/html/msdn_comppr.asp

for more information but I don't know what you want the spec for
There is a whole section on Component Development that has everything from Automation to DCOM to binary behaviors.

Are you trying to get COM working with a different platform and language like MAC and OS 10?

 

[JOLESEN]

Thanks a lot for your information.

No, I am not trying to implement COM on a different platform, but in general I like to read / refer to specification's - and not just (blindly) accept the way other people interpreted the spec. - and sure not a DRAFT spec..
After all the spec is what everything else is build upon - so It's nice to know if some code/text is written the way it is because of the specification, because that has become a de facto standard or just because of some programmers preferences.
I have been reading / trying COM stuff for a few weeks now, and I understand quite a lot, but when it comes to ATL, Macros, wizards etc. i very quickly feel LOST.
Thus I just decided to build my own COM-Server in plain C++ : no wizards, no ATL - nothing except C++ (And the specification ...).
I can see that quite a lot of courses take that approach.

Am I crazy or just wasting my time ??


/JOlesen

 

[SemperFiDownUnda]

Nah your not crazy. Its just another level. Take COM in VB. Sure you don't have to know the inner workings of COM to use it but if you know how things are actually done you will probably write much better code.

You might want to search the net for articles like
COM on Linux By Frank Rem.

http://www.idevresource.com/com/library/articles/comonlinux.asp

If you find a COM server on Linux then your set but this shows you a lot of what most of us take for granted.

 

[JOLESEN]

Thanx a lot ! /JOlesen