Rating: 
Summary: Very, Very Good
Review: I read the first version of Ted's Book, and would have rated it with 4 stars. This one is a very solid 5 stars. Ted does an excellent job of covering every topic of importance, with the precise amount of detail for the situation. As I have moved through the book, I have looked in the index for every "hot topic" related to COM+ (i.e. Object Pooling, Threading, Queded Components, Events, Activation, Contexts, etc..) They are all here, and covered in great detail.It's hard to explain the feeling of complete coverage and satisfaction that you get when you read a well-thought out, well-written approach to any technical topic, but here's my bottom line: When I read Pattison, I feel like he has so much experience writing, teaching, and speaking on COM/COM+ that his book is a perfect distillation of all of the relevant topics, in the precise quantity of high-topic coverage and low-level detail. My impression is that all of his years of research and teaching have now been perfectly presented in one very digestible volume. I'm getting everything I need, in the right order and detail level, to feel very intelligent about the topic. I actually spend most of my time in Delphi, but do a lot of VB and C++ work also. As an MCSD and big Microsoft proponent, I know that COM+ is going to open up a whole new world of opportunity for server-side development. The topics and knowledge herein, while presented primarily in VB6, are obviously applicable for anyone doing COM/COM+ with VB, Delphi, or C++. I can, without reservation recommend this book to anyone in that audience. One final comment: The earlier negative review about the "dog object" is way off the mark. Pattison uses a fairly simple object in the first few chapters of the book to illustrate and teach fundamental COM principles. This approach is much appreciated, again Ted demonstrates a remarkable ability to impart large quantities of knowledge into short, understandable sentences.
Rating:
Summary: A Well Balanced Book
Review: I started off in computer science as a C++ programmer. Naturally, when it came to learning COM I began by reading Inside COM and Inside ATL both published by Microsoft Press. I was very impressed with the low level details and the building upon concepts and fundamentals rather than being bombarded by senseless documentation best for when you already understand the essentials. Having recently begun to develop more and more Visual Basic COM objects for MTS and COM+ in response to the growing need on the job, I decided to go with another Microsoft Press book that would relate to me the details of developing COM objects in Visual Basic and how it relates to the underlying model(IUnknown, IDispatch, Virtual Method Table, IIDs, GUIDs, etc.) This was the one book and the only book that thoroughly explained to me the details of what was happening when I developed an object in Visual Basic and then clicked the Make ActiveX dll button. It explained to me Interface based programming in Visual Basic, threading models limitations and why(thread local storage), and the SCM as it related to New and CreateObject. This book didn't stop there, it gave me a good run down of the architecture of IIS and a thorough understanding of how to make fundamental design decisions accounting for scalability when designing COM objects to run in a web application. This books discussions of COM+ was also very thorough for a VB book and stuck to the nitty-gritty and didn't get lost in pointless details best left to the MSDN documentation. I've come away from this book with a real understanding of distributed transactions and multiobject transactions, the doomed bit, the happy bit, and the done bit. In this regard, I now see exactly why an object has to be deactivated eventhough it cannot be pooled in order to complete a transaction. I think the security chapter was also a fantastic plus. As a programmer I have often shyed away from learning too much security related issues but now at this point I'm not going to be confused any longer by the IWAM account and the IUSER account and impersonation. If you want to learn COM+ and COM with VB then this book is an absolute necessity. The only question is; where will Microsoft head in the future and will you be able to leverage existing skillsets while still moving forward?
Rating:
Summary: Required reading
Review: I've read far too many books on everything VB, ASP, NT, MTS, SQL Server, etc. etc over the years and this is hands-down the best. If you're even considering doing n-tier development, you MUST read this book. If you're not, read it anyway. The book EXPLAINS so many topics that other books mention in passing it blows my mind that it's only 400-some pages. I hate to admit it, but I can't put this book down. It's sick. Buy this book, then buy it for everyone that doesn't have it.
Rating:
Summary: Required reading
Review: I've read far too many books on everything VB, ASP, NT, MTS, SQL Server, etc. etc over the years and this is hands-down the best. If you're even considering doing n-tier development, you MUST read this book. If you're not, read it anyway. The book EXPLAINS so many topics that other books mention in passing it blows my mind that it's only 400-some pages. I hate to admit it, but I can't put this book down. It's sick. Buy this book, then buy it for everyone that doesn't have it.
Rating:
Summary: Must Read
Review: If you plan on building components correctly you MUST read this book. Excellent for ASP people too. Not much coding here at all but how to architect everything correctly and all performance/security/gotcha implications. Every chapter is excellent. No overview/appendix chapters you don't need. Just meat here.
Rating:
Summary: No hint of "Learn COM+ in 7, 14 or 21 days" in the title
Review: It looks like the authors of the negative reviews were looking for something this book clearly states that it is not. In the introduction, Ted Pattison describes his book as one to fully explore the details of COM+ without filling pages of cut and paste code. The example code is on the CD - saving this book at least a hundred pages. I am a light VB programmer in a time where my VB/COM skills are in demand. This book has knocked me over the fence of begineer VB programmers by allowing me to understand more advanced concepts. Don't expect to breeze through this book, the content is not easily digestable at first read. The author doesn't add a lot of fluff and covers a lot more ground as a result. Highly recommended book for those moving standard apps to n-tier methodology.
Rating: 
Summary: Pretty awesome book
Review: Ted does a truly remarkable job of explaining why we have COM+ and how VisualBasic handles the complicated behind the scenes details. Chapter 2 is the best explaination of interface based programming that I've ever read. If you are a developer at any level, the early chapters are key even if you are clueless when reading later chapters. You will finally understand valuable object-oriented and distributed design concepts that are often poorly explained. This book is a must read for anyone planning on developing practical, scalable, and distributed applications using COM+. My only wish is that it would have spent a little more time discussing how to optimize components for IIS and ASP. The chapter related to this topic spent a great deal of time discussing load balancing but not how to optimize components interacting with scripting clients. Otherwise, a truly excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: If you are programming VB and COM you need this book
Review: Ted Pattison is to VB and COM what Petzold was to an earlier generation of Windows programmers, and William Vaughn to VB and database. I was able to use many of the techniques he described in his first edition, notably interface based VB, on an NT 4 project. Now that we are on W2K, the environment has changed enough that I felt I wanted some guidance with COM+. This book has bailed me out of several problems, just today. Maybe I'm in over my head in some places, but the reality is, we are often thrown into projects where we don't have 6 months to get up-to-speed on "how it's done right". I know I probably wouldn't have been able to get the information I need out of the Help files, but I sure have found it in this book. Ted's book is one of the best written technical books I have (hundreds). He explains, anticipates, and doesn't assume. As another reviewer mentioned, every word counts. On the other hand, the book is written so that you can pick it up and read almost from any point, and get incredibly useful information. Thanks, Ted.
Rating:
Summary: Money Well Spent!
Review: The author definitely did extensive research into COM+ when writing this book. Every page is packed of insightful information and valueable guide to use COM+ EFFECTIVELY. If you are a developer using COM components, this book will sure to broaden your understanding into COM and get your skill up to date with COM+. Sure there are other books out there on VB & COM, but I have yet to across one that is as well written as this one. Many reviewers said they read the book more than once. It's not because the book is hard to understand, it is because they didn't want to miss out anything.
Rating:
Summary: This book is a mind reader... Its the best.
Review: The common mistake everyone does while learning COM+ is that they try to pickup the syntactical details to write a good COM+ component. But trust me you will never learn COM+ that way. There is more theory in COM+ than code and this book exactly does that. It gives you the inside scoop and at the same time doesn't overload you with details. The best part about this book is that the author never make you feel bad for YOU being a VB programmer. When you complete this book, you will feel good about yourself and have more confidence in your work.
This book is definitely not for beginners. This book is for those people who want to know "Why things work the way they do in Windows and Why do I always do these things in VB?" At the end of this book you will think twice even before you write a simple Select statement. You will know what I mean when you read the book. I took a few day off to complete it as it was so good.
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