Rating: 
Summary: Great In-Depth Reading
Review: I found this book to be very informative. If you have a good knowledge of C++, this book will dive you right in to the innerworkings of COM.
Rating: 
Summary: Sure it is a Good Book on COM
Review: But..where is essential COM+ from Don Box
Rating:
Summary: Excellent for the intermediate COM developer
Review: Although not the easiest book to read, Essential COM contains more information pound-for-pound than any other COM book. The book covers C++ COM, not ATL, and provides the reader with an intensive treatment of the underpinnings and rationale behind the COM specification. Some of the more obscure parts of COM are examined, and can be confusing to the novice COM programmer (Chapters 3 and 5 will drive you nuts), but a proper understanding of all the materials will definitely give you a leg up. If you are looking for lots of programming examples or a cut-and-paste guide to beginning COM, this is not it, but if you want an insider's view, give this book a try.
Rating:
Summary: This Guy Knows This Stuff!
Review: For readers with some exposure to distributed components, this book gives an excellent and convincing defense of 'why' and 'why nots' of the Microsoft approach. Natural flow of the core concepts into each other makes this book a sure reference on a COM-aware's shelf. If you are new to COM world (in which case I would recommend you Dale ROGERSON's Inside COM) or don't have a solid C++ background, you may find this book a little bit too technical.
Rating:
Summary: Useful foundation
Review: On the whole this book is a good intro into the challenging world of COM.A few flaws in the technical content mar its utility as a serious reference, notably the incorrect explanation of the mechanics of standard marshalling. If you're learning the concepts of COM, buy this book. If you are already expert, and are looking to delve even deeper, don't bother: read the COM specification and crank up the compiler.
Rating:
Summary: Never leave home without it
Review: This is a great book if you already have some experience with COM. This book fills in all of the detailed gaps and also answers a lot of the whys of COM. I find I always need to have this book around because I always learn something new whenever I have to look something up to contribute to a discussion on COM.
Rating:
Summary: Essential COM+, Please, Don.
Review: No doubt, this is the best theoretical foundation on COM. However, I am looking forward to his Essential COM+. I will rate all his books five star, that's for sure.
Rating:
Summary: Explains COM clearly and thoroughly (all in due time)
Review: This is the best COM book I've read so far. Don Box has an amazing mind. He's able to organize and express this complex body of knowledge in a way that makes complete sense. There are two problems that I hope he will address in a later version. One is that the book would benefit from a more "drill-down" approach, presenting the basic, most common usage first, and then drilling down into the esoterica. For example, when talking about class objects, I think it would be most useful to talk about them first in their role as implementors of IClassFactory, which is their most common function, and then tell us about all of the other cool stuff you can do with them if you want. If the book did a better job of formalizing what was most important and what was of secondary importance, making liberal use of multi-level headings, I think it would be a lot more usable as a reference. Second, the real-world examples are of limited use. In chapter 5 Don states, "Occasionally, it is necessary to marshal interfaces explicitly from one apartment to another outside the context of an activation request or method call." Why? I'm sure there's a good answer, possibly somewhere in this book, but I can't find it anywhere near this statement. He just goes on to explain how to do it, without explaining why. Things like this make it a bit frustrating. But this is without a doubt the most thorough and lucid introduction to COM I've ever read. And as other readers have mentioned, the first chapter is a triumph in itself, finally explaining the true foundation of COM in a way that cuts through the confusion.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding book for the COM Programmer
Review: If you have worked with COM and already have a good idea of what it is all about, this book will fill in ALL the holes. If you know nothing about COM, the first chapter will tell you why COM came about, but the rest of the book might gets into too much detail. It is a MUST to be a good C++ programmer to understand what Don Box has to say in the outstanding book!
Rating:
Summary: A Must Read
Review: One of the best COM books i have read. The way Don Box leads to COM concepts in the first chapter is the best. Not for programmers who do not know C++
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