Essential COM

Rating:
Summary: Useful for filling in the blanks, but not a summary of COM.
Review: Worth reading--will probably fill some holes in your COM knowledge. Box wants to ground programmers in the theory, but goes too far in his academic approach to the material. Combine this with a more hands-on COM book e.g. David Platt.

Rating:
Summary: A must have for C++ developers, but definately not a How-To
Review: I found the reading to be difficult in parts and most of the source code annoying (in fact,some places you have to read around the source to make sense of an example), but I found this book was very helpful in explaining some internal workings of COM and Microsoft tools dealing with IDL, and other compiler specific idiosyncracies , but not very helpful in real world application. Combining this book with Dale Rogerson's 'Inside COM' and Adam Denning's 'Active X Controls Inside Out' (which both reference Kraig Brockschmidt's Inside OLE several times) gave me the tools necessary to acheive all my COM needs.

Rating:
Summary: Think Twice
Review: This is not a book for learning COM. The problem is that it's also not a very good medium to advanced COM book either. It's more like a white paper or a brief on COM. I got the feeling like he was rushing to get through all the topics. I felt the book was poorly written and hard to follow. I would suggest reading the COM Spec from Microsoft before reading Essential COM.

Rating:
Summary: Essentially for Experienced C++ Programmers!
Review: The first chapter of the book superbly explains the essence of COM. From that point on, the book becomes almost incomprehensible to a beginning/intermediate C++ programmer because of the author's use of highly technical and ambiguous terms. I think that from a pedagogical standpoint, this book is relatively "poorly" written. It is also riddled with errors, especially in the source codes.

Read the first chapter of this book and then get another book that deals with the mechanics of the COM architecture (or better yet, read the COM Specifications documentation from Microsoft).

Rating:
Summary: A good book on the background of COM
Review: It is a good book on the motivation of COM and its background. But I find the author's choice of words somewhat confusing, therefore definitely not for beginners. <Inside COM> is good for the beginners and practioners, but this book is more like an academic treatise, trying to give COM a philosophical treatment. A better title would be <The Being of COM> or <Existential COM>. I find the discussions on thread models, apartments, custom marshalling, and security to be very good, not easily available elsewhere. But I have to stare at particular words longer than usual to get IT.

By the way, on the CD that came with <Inside COM>, there is a COM spec book, com_spec.rtf in com_spec directory. Even though it is named com_spec and dated 1995, it is very readable and still relevant.

Rating:
Summary: Essential reading - but not for beginners
Review: This is an essential book for any COM developer, but unlike other reviewers I would doubt that a beginner would find it a good first choice. It contains a lot of information in a small package, some of it difficult to find elsewhere. Unlike a previous reviewer, I thought the first chapter dreadful, confusing the issue rather than simplifying. A better beginner's text is Inside COM (Microsoft Press). But buy this one too, if you're serious about COM.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent COM book
Review: Especially the first chapter is excellent. The rest is concise and extremely well written - the book avoids the bloat so common with computer books nowadays (most seem to be over 1000 pages - difficult to read lying on the couch ;-)

The book is oriented towards C++ programmers, though I think everyone should read this book, even if they use some other language (fluency in C++ helps to understand the examples though).

Rating:
Summary: Excellent COM book, first chapter in particular.
Review: This book is well worth the purchase price for the first chapter alone. The first chapter gives the best description I have ever seen of what COM is designed to do & why it is implimented the way it is. This desciption is done in an amazingly clear, well-thought-out manner. The rest of the book is quite good, but the first chapter is genius. Buy this book

Rating:
Summary: An excellant book for COM after reading Inside COM - Dale Ro
Review: A must have book for a serious COM developer

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for those that have some knowledge of COM
Review: Although this book may not be for someone brand new to COM, it is good reading for developers that have some basic knowledge of COM. Don presents the information very well. He is definitely an authority on the subject!