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Rating: 
Summary: Not usable by itself.
Review: Didn't want to bother, but seeing utmostly clueless reviews here, I thought I'd add a couple of words. First: the book is exactly about what it says it is about--MS COM's *Interface Definition Language (IDL.) I understand some people feel disappointed, and yet, sorry, it's not about ethernet, nor about COM, nor about losing 50 pounds in three weeks--it's about the MS IDL and nothing more than that. So, read the damn title and don't complain that after reading this book you still can't fix your refrigerator. However, if taken for what it is, it's very good--I wouldn't say great (could be better structured, and the writing is uneven)--but compared to the other options (printing out the tersest ever midl reference off of MSDN) it is a god's gift to those who--pay attention, please--want to achieve an in-depth understanding of the marshalling issues as applied to MS COM. Not every Windows programmer needs that. Not even every COM programmer needs that. But to those who deal with COM as a means of distribution (rather than componentization only) and provided they are curious about what they're doing,... that is a very worthy purchase. There's another, more recent book on it too--a decent one as well (sorry I forget the title, just search on "IDL", there aren't that many books on this topic.) Interestingly, there's a useful MIDL overview in a seemingly unrelated, older, book on Windows network programming (by Alok K. Sinha, from AW.) It's probably out of print by now, but if you see this book in some old-books' store, I recommend grabbing it.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Com book
Review: I bought this book having grasped the basics of COM and IDL and expecting it to help me improve my designs and better understand the issues in how to develop a "good" COM interface. I found to be mostly disappointing from a design standpoint. Many issues which six months later I had learned were really very important (e.g. the vital question of whether to support IDispatch or not and the huge performance penalty in MFC's default use of this interface) were not covered. There are many trade-offs in COM and I found little discussion of them here. As a reference it has potential, since it is thorough and deep, but as other reviews have mentioned, it's not as easy to use as a reference as it perhaps should be. In the end, it's been sitting on my shelf largely untouched as other ATL and COM books become dog-eared with use. So from me, it's thumbs down.
Rating: 
Summary: Some useful information, but not as complete as expected.
Review: I bought this book having grasped the basics of COM and IDL and expecting it to help me improve my designs and better understand the issues in how to develop a "good" COM interface. I found to be mostly disappointing from a design standpoint. Many issues which six months later I had learned were really very important (e.g. the vital question of whether to support IDispatch or not and the huge performance penalty in MFC's default use of this interface) were not covered. There are many trade-offs in COM and I found little discussion of them here. As a reference it has potential, since it is thorough and deep, but as other reviews have mentioned, it's not as easy to use as a reference as it perhaps should be. In the end, it's been sitting on my shelf largely untouched as other ATL and COM books become dog-eared with use. So from me, it's thumbs down.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent in exposing how interfaces should be designed.
Review: I have been a COM programmer for Texas Instruments for about 2 years. I taught myself how to program in COM by reading various COM books that gave excellent info about COM programming but, very little info about the cryptic looking IDL file and how to properly design interfaces. Dr. Al Major exposes how interfaces should be designed with clarity and reason.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book for designing COM interface
Review: I have read many COM books. But none of the books provided the ideas of using COM to design a large scale of system. In Dr. Al Major's book, he revealed the techniques of using COM to design a complex systems. If you want to understand COM interface and especially want to know how to use COM to design your system. This is an excellent book for it.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book, especially as an IDL reference
Review: Some of the more esoteric stuff in the second half of the book wasn't as useful to me since I pretty much develop standard dual-interface components, but the first half covering IDL and marshalling was extremely good.
Rating:
Summary: this is the book to write COM, starting from the data model
Review: This book is a bottom up approach to COM, which starts from the IDL, but then goes through all the marshalling mechanisms, remote method calls, etc. About Mid-book Dr. Major presents an application design model which starts from the interfaces. The book will prove useful to those who want to design COM classes and interfaces that know how to behave based on whether they are local or remote, in-proc or out of proc and in general are better adapted to their environment.
Rating:
Summary: COM IDL? Its all in here
Review: This is definitely the COM IDL reference book. There aren't many books devoted to the subject and most COM books focus on the technology from a specific language perspective not spending any time on IDL itself. Frankly I can't say that it has helped me a great deal with everyday development but it certainly has made my understanding of a few things much clearer and it has reinforced some ideas I had that I was not sure of. Like other reviewers I did not find the other half of the book to be of great value but it was interesting to compare (partial) implementations of the same design in 5 different languages in the same book. My final praise is on the excellent comparison of the various IDL types and how they map to the various languages including a discussion/description of the ubiquitous SAFEARRAY.
Rating:
Summary: COM IDL? Its all in here
Review: This is definitely the COM IDL reference book. There aren't many books devoted to the subject and most COM books focus on the technology from a specific language perspective not spending any time on IDL itself. Frankly I can't say that it has helped me a great deal with everyday development but it certainly has made my understanding of a few things much clearer and it has reinforced some ideas I had that I was not sure of. Like other reviewers I did not find the other half of the book to be of great value but it was interesting to compare (partial) implementations of the same design in 5 different languages in the same book. My final praise is on the excellent comparison of the various IDL types and how they map to the various languages including a discussion/description of the ubiquitous SAFEARRAY.
Rating:
Summary: A good resource for obscure IDL
Review: This is one of those books that would be nice to have just in case. But the IDL that most programmers would need can be picked up from COM books or the MSDN. The author has some nice diagrams for marshalling and discusses various IDL nuances for pointers among other topics. He leads a rather obscure argument for not using QueryInterface(). This book would probably mean more for those that are highly skilled in COM. This book is definitely not the place to start to learn COM. Try "Beginning ATL 3" or the more readable "Active Template Library" by Armstrong, or others. Keep in mind that IDL files are not even necessary to produce COM servers unless of course type libraries are needed. A use for this book would be to tinker with the IDL that is produced by wizards [ATL] or to understand it. But again chances are that one could or would learn most of the IDL that they need elsewhere.
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