Vb Com : A Visual Basic Programmer's Introduction to Com

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by Thomas Lewis

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• Vb6 Uml Design and Development; Jake Sturm
• Visual Basic 6 Win32 API Tutorial; Jason Bock
• Professional ADO RDS Programming with ASP; John Papa, et al
• Beginning Visual Basic 6 Objects; Peter Wright

The book begins with one of the most approachable and effective tours of COM you're likely to find anywhere. The author covers COM components along with fundamental terms (such as interfaces, globally unique identifiers (GUIDs), IUnknown, and the registry) with a minimum of hassle. In a section on OLE Automation, the author shows how to use VB to script Excel spreadsheets, while explaining the details of early and late binding, IDispatch, and dual interfaces.

Next the author discusses how to build components, starting with ActiveX servers (both dynamic-link libraries [DLLs] and standalone EXEs) and proceeding to ActiveX controls. (The section on building controls is particularly strong, with good coverage of Ambient and Extender objects and connection points for event handling.) Throughout, VB COM relies on tools-based examples, with plenty of screen shots from VB 6 tools (such as its Class Builder Wizard). Later the book moves on to the enterprise with coverage of Distributed COM (DCOM), multitiered architectures, Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS), and emerging standards such as COM+.

In all, VB COM delivers a clear picture of the inner workings of COM for the VB developer with a useful mix of simplicity and essential technical detail. --Richard Dragan

Book Description
COM has traditionally been considered as something that VB programmers don't need to think about too much: VB is supposed to look after all the nitty gritty of COM, leaving the VB programmers to rapidly develop working business solutions. However, with Microsoft pushing hard on its multi-tiered technologies, more and more people are becoming aware that COM is something important. For any moderately advanced VB programming at all, COM is present - often under the guise of ActiveX. COM underlies most of which is going on in VB. COM is components and objects: and there are hundreds of objects and components even in the basic VB environment. So what's going on? What is COM? Why is it so important? What can VB programmers do with COM? Foe newcomers to COM, this is all a bit mysterious. For competent but relatively non-technical VB professional programmers, the full story of COM is still somewhat disjointed. Meanwhile, a new type of programming consultant is coming into existence: COM design experts. Why? Because as soon as you start writing professional VB applications, you are making COM decisions (or VB is making them for you), whether it is with ActiveX, MTS, DCOM.. and some of these decisions have real implications for the success of your software design and performance.

Synopsis
"VB6 COM" tackles the important, but often under-discussed issue of COM and VB, offers a global look at COM issues, starting from first principles, puts new technologies within the COM context, discusses the real COM future and discusses some possible implications of COM+--all within a well-paced, practical tutorial format.

About the Author
Thomas Lewis has been working in the software business for 6 years. He became a Visual Basic programmer when he decided that 3 pages of C++ code to write a Windows-based "Hello World" application was too tedious and wanted a language that solved business scenarios quickly. Starting with Visual Basic 3.0, he set out on building solutions with Visual Basic that involve COM components, Windows DNA applications, and I*net applications. Thomas currently works for Microsoft evangelizing Windows DNA, SQL Server, Visual Basic and COM.

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