09/14/1999

More than 30 students and faculty members attended the second meeting of the Club on September 14, 1999. The second meeting was dedicated to a discussion of Microsoft's COM/DCOM technologies. Needles to say, it was quite natural that the presentation on this topic was given by one of the best specialists in this field - Mark Bramer from Microsoft.

Mark first presented the theoretical foundations of COM/DCOM technologies an d answered questions from the audience. His presentation was followed by an actual demonstration of COM principles: Mark created a working COM application from scratch, proving that this technology is accessible to everybody who wants to use it.

Brian Lawton - the president of the Club presented Mark with a UM-St. Louis T-shirt and Mark promised to do his best in promoting our school at Microsoft . The meeting concluded with a popular tradition: a giveaway of Microsoft souvenirs and software.

So, what is COM and DCOM?
The Component Object Model (COM) is a component software architecture that allows applications and systems to be built from components supplied by different software vendors. COM is the underlying architecture that forms the foundation for higher-level software services, like those provided by OLE. OLE services span various aspects of component software, including compound documents, custom controls, inter-application scripting, data transfer, and other software interactions.

These services provide distinctly different functionality to the user; however, they share a fundamental requirement for a mechanism that allows binary software components, supplied by different software vendors, to connect to and communicate with each other in a well-defined manner.

This mechanism is supplied by COM, a component software architecture that: Defines a binary standard for component interoperability
Is programming language-independent
Is provided on multiple platforms (Microsoft\256 Windows\256, Microsoft Windows NT™, Apple\256 Macintosh\256, UNIX\256)
Provides for robust evolution of component-based applications and systems
Is extensible

In addition, COM provides mechanisms for the following: Communications between components, even across process and network boundaries
Shared memory management between components
Error and status reporting
Dynamic loading of components
It is important to note that COM is a general architecture for component software. While Microsoft is applying COM to address specific areas such as controls, compound documents, automation, data transfer, storage and naming, and others, any developer can take advantage of the structure and foundation that COM provides.

To learn more about COM and DCOM, link to Microsoft's website at http://www.microsoft.com/com