Description:
Written for the intermediate to advanced Visual Basic developer, Distributed COM Applications Development Using Visual Basic 6.0 ably demonstrates how VB can be used to write powerful, scalable distributed applications using the distributed Component Object Model (DCOM). The book begins by contrasting traditional client/server computing with today's n-tiered architectures (including Microsoft's three-tiered Distributed Internet Architecture [DNA] approach). A general introduction to designing objects with Visual Basic follows in which the author enlists a case study for a video rental database. This includes a presentation of the best of user interface design in VB (including working with TreeView and toolbar controls). You don't need to know much about TCP/IP to use DCOM, of course, but a section on this popular Internet protocol with the WinSock control provides some background material. A full introduction to programming databases with ActiveX Data Objects (ADO) becomes incorporated into the video rental database example. After a quick look at ActiveX controls, the book provides an overview of COM, along with the benefits and potential risks of choosing between DCOM's (often perplexing) threading models. After presenting material on object linking and embedding (OLE) Automation, the book zeroes in on creating DCOM components, data-aware VB objects with transactions and MTS, and real-world deployment issues with DCOM. These chapters provide a state-of-the-art guide to programming with Visual Basic in ways recommended by Microsoft. Armed with these robust DCOM objects, the book next turns to the Web--first with ASPs and then with VB WebClasses for generating browser-neutral Web pages on the fly. (A final chapter looks at creating Active Documents out of VB forms for use with Internet Explorer.) In all, this practically-minded text provides a useful tour for real-world thin-client computing with VB and DCOM. The book assures that today's VB is all you need to write scalable, Web-centric distributed components and applications for the Microsoft platform. --Richard Dragan
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