What Is This Book About?

This book describes the functions of DCOM Microsoft's Distributed Component Object Model and the services based on DCOM, which can be used to build distributed applications.

The aim of this book is not to teach you how to develop distributed applications using DCOM, but to explain what functions DCOM provides so that you are able to use DCOM more effectively, understand the options open to you when using DCOM, and understand something of the types of application that can be built using DCOM.

We have concentrated also on explaining on which platforms besides Windows NT the services are found so that you know more about the limitations and possibilities of developing with DCOM.

Who Is It For?

Technical designers will find this book useful, as will systems analysts, systems designers, programmers with an interest in design, technical architects, and possibly technical managers and project leaders. If you really have little idea what DCOM is or does and want a simple-to-read overview of what you can do with it this book is for you!

Any Bias?

Many books on the market about COM, Microsoft technologies, CORBA (the OMG's Common Object Request Broker Architecture), objects, and so on are written by the vendors' employees. On the one hand, this has the advantage that the information in them is "from the horse's mouth." On the other hand, the information you get may be biased toward the products they are describing perhaps a glowing picture is painted of the merits without much attention...