Rating: 
Summary: A must read for every COM developer
Review: I found this book to be well written & well organized. While having read numerous COM books, it is this book that helped me pull it all together with respect to COM. While the first half of the book is a good introduction, the second half builds on that knowledge & extends our reach into reuse, containment & aggregation & so much more. I found Chapter 10 & its detailing of component registration particularly useful for the project @ hand. Moreover, with the class factory coverage, I realized that MS's COM is nothing more that OSF's DCE adapted to Windows & that COM needs to instantiate components, marshal function calls free, locally or remotely &, from there on, beyond doing more of the same, consider threading & security issues & render them in the framework as pertinent.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent C++ Level Introduction to the COM Basics
Review: COM is rich in good books. It has the heavenly three (D. Chappel, D. Box, K. Brockschmidt) and now this one. It is a good alternative to Don Boxes (Mr. COM) masterpiece. It clearly explains the foundations on a C++ level and no more. You will have to turn to Brockschmidt for that. I strongly recommand this book and wish more other subjects would have books on comparable quality.
Rating:
Summary: Best book for understanding COM, but...
Review: This IS the best book around for understanding the mechanism behind COM, BUT, at the end of it, you will not be able to code too much of COM using the existing tools (VC++,etc). After reading this book, you need to pick up some more, in order to learn how to implement COM in real life.
Rating: 
Summary: Bad style good content
Review: For a C++ developer wanting to understand COM all the information you need is in this one (for an even deeper look at things try Essential COM).
Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: A very good introduction and explanation to the basic principles of COM. Dale has a very good ability to explain clearly a really hard topic such as that. He also has a good sense of humor and a fine style of writing.Either you have already tried and failed or this is the first time you are attempting to understand COM this is the book you need.
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Introduction To COM...
Review: If you are new to COM or know very little about it, this is the place to start. It explores the infrastructure without overwhelming the newcomer and gives very convincing arguments about why a specific component is there and how it ended up so. Keep in mind that one way of looking at this technology is to see it as an improvement on C++. (For this I call Don BOX to witness stand [1st chapter of 'Essential COM']) Also, don't forget that C++ is the implementation language of MFC and ATL frameworks. Hence the tendency to emphasize C++ in such technologies and (Micosoft Press) books. If you can't stand C/C++, I suggest that you grab one of those 'Active ... with Visual Basic/ Visual J++' books. These languages make the use of some aspects much easier, e.g. garbage collection, exception handling. But then again can you claim to know an architecture without getting your hands dirty with its assembler? I guess not! When you finish reading this book, if you think you can take more serious stuff, make sure you check out Don BOX's books: 'Essential COM' and 'Effective COM.'
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for beginners and useful for proffessionals
Review: In this book I found that kind information I never found reading dry technical documentations about COM. I recommend this book for professionals because it is a good book to review your knowledge and discover some new look on COM. The style is attractive and amusing. This book is very friendly for intelligent humans.
Rating:
Summary: Learn to walk before run
Review: This is a great book for any of you who would like to learn more about COM. This book does not introduce you to advanced COM subjects, but that was not the authors intention. After reading this book you will gain a firm understanding of COM fundemenatals which will enable you to further your knowledge in more advanced topics in COM. After this book I would suggest reading Beginning ATL COM by Wrox Publishing. As someone new to COM development I read other more advanced books before purchasing this one. Don't make the mistake I did - get this book first.
Rating: 
Summary: Be Warned
Review: 1) Know C++ 2) Know Visual C++ 3) Spend Time Reading and Re-reading 4) Prepare for mistakes in the book This book is decent until half way. Then, the mistakes are many and gets worse as it goes. The worst part is that the examples use makefiles that you can't understand. This is okay until the examples get more complex and then the author stops explaining the projects. The author should include .dsp files, but doesn't. At least, he should explain the projects so I have a chance at building the examples later in the book. My favorite quote is on page 211 "First, we'll use C++ classes to make using COM components more like using C++ classes." My second favorite quote is on page 287 "The first three (parameters) are easily explained... The third parameter holds localization information." Dale never again mentions "localization", so I guess it was easy for him to explain.
Rating:
Summary: It makes you a better C++ developer
Review: This is a remarkable book for those who do not want to feel like a dummy looking at the stuff produced by a code generator (a so-called Wizard). This books explains everything, from why a C++ generated virtual table complies with COM specifications to the threading models of COM. This book will serve you best if you follow it letter by letter and develop base classes for your development according to the author. Then try to use standard ATL Wizard from VC++, compare its output to what you have learned and you will say to yourself: Ha! I know what is done and why! You will also get a feel that the author could have been the one who created the ATL Wizard. Even a complete example from this book, TANGRAM, bears the same name as a VC++ example. However unless you really have to develop very customized stuff I would recommend Wizard since it does all the work of the numerous component registrations for you and handles all compiler and linker switches. Also the book uses makefiles, so if you like IDE, you will feel slightly uncomfortable. It is also an excellent C++ tutorial on multiple inheritance and class libraries. A lot of C++ details are explained along the way. You will be a much better C++ programmer after you are done with the book
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