Professional Dcom Programming

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, thorough, concise, addresses what developers need
Review: Dr. Richard Grimes does an excellent job of covering the world of DCOM - automation, security, threading models, NT services as COM servers, MTS, debugging DCOM servers. Everything I need to know about the ins and outs of DCOM is in this book and it is covered in a professional, thorough manner.

Note that Dr. Grimes does not cover the tools and techniques for writing DCOM servers (ATL, MFC, VC++), but it is as well that he shouldn't have - that would be distracting and draw focus away from the more challenging tasks addressed by Dr. Grimes. Tools and techniques should be covered separately (as well they are).

In addition to all of the DCOM architecture, design and implementation gems covered, I use this book exclusively as my "other-than-Microsoft" reference to MTS. In one chapter Dr. Grimes performs a superior effort in coverage of MTS than is done in SAMS' Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0 (Roger Jennings' Database Workshop), a book entirely devoted to MTS.

I look forward to other such efforts of Dr. Grimes being published.

Rating:
Summary: A very confusing book.
Review: I am an experienced DCOM developer and I found this book useful. It covers what DCOM is about, in a clear way - it is just a pity that it has not been updated for the newer features DCOM since the book was first published. I have no idea what so-called Dr Wilson thinks he is on, because as an NT expert I found Dr Grimes' description of NT security fine (though a little out of date now). The packet sniffing is very useful (Dr Wilson - have you tried to interpret what the packets mean, I've tried it for an RPC application I have developed and I can tell you it is not easy from Microsoft's documentation, Dr Grimes must have put a lot of work in this), so much so that the Eddons' have almost completely copied this chapter in their book!

This may not be the most up-to-date book, but it is a classic in COM development!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent fuel for a camp fire
Review: It is a great book for average COM programmer who wants to fully understand details of security, marshalling and multithreading in distrubuted environment. The author concisely explains these complex topics in lucid manner. The combination of theory and code samples is optimal. The book may not be good for beginners(who don't understand COM) or very advanced COM/DCOM programmers, But it is just prfect for intermediate level COM/DCOM programmers.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent fuel for a camp fire
Review: Micro$oft is famous for its ability to push out new development technologies. The reason behind this planned obsolesence is obvious, every time they come out with something new people will have to open their wallets to "keep up."

DCOM is just another disposable technology. As such, it was a complete failure; one that the marketing folks at M$ have tried to bury as quickly as possible under an avalanche of .NET hype.

DCOM was hard to port because, like COM, it is based on a binary standard (i.e. a standard that changes when you leave x86 and go to 64-bit RISC). Not only that, but DCOM doesn't support distributed transactions. Worst of all, DCOM is a very, very complicated technology to use. Three strikes... YOU'RE OUT!

The half-wit MBAs at Micro$oft realized their mistake and have abandoned DCOM, leaving it forever in the backwaters where the only record of its sorry existence are stupid books like this.

I have no idea why someone would want to buy this book. Folks, this is a dead technology. It is no more. It is an ex-techology. If you buy this book, you are lying to yourself. This book will sit an gather dust, unless you can find more productive uses for it...like burning it to stay warm.

Rating:
Summary: not Professional
Review: The book's title is totaly wrong, it should be like DCOM Programming in VC++ with ATL, because that's the only area it focus to, it's good on that though it lacks a lot for being professional, discusess very little DCOM itself.

Rating:
Summary: Useless
Review: This book misrepresents itself. It is anything but "Professional DCOM Programming". There is little DCOM, almost no coding outside the spoon-feeding wizards of ATL, and no examination of any of the challenging areas of COM/DCOM.

The book does singularly impress, however, by taking line honours in a very competitive field: by providing the worst explanation of NT security I have ever read.

It is educationally poor, technically unimpressive (despite Dr Grimes attempts to convince us of his expertise with a packet sniffer and a hex editor), and smacks of a quick grab at what at the time was an under-supplied market.

If you want to be expert in any of the fields that this book purports to clarify, I suggest you consult the experts.

Rating:
Summary: This best book on DCOM
Review: This coming from an author of 2 books on the subject. It is a difficult read, but the content is by far the most accurate and complete.

Rating:
Summary: Nice book for experienced developers
Review: This is a good book for experienced developers but for beginners it is not, as the flow is difficult to understand. But examples are very practical.

Rating:
Summary: This is a must have book for COM developers
Review: This is a terrific book! Even if you're not ready yet for the more advanced topics it covers related to remote servers, it has one of the best chapters I've ever read on basic COM architecture (Chapter 3). This book does a great job of mixing diagrams with code and has many sample programs. This is the only book I've seen that does a detailed job of showing how to develop DCOM servers as services. This book is oriented towards C++ developers. In my opinion, this book along with 3 others: Beginnng ATL COM, Professional Active X/COM Programming (both by WROX) and Essential COM (Don Box, Addison Wesley) are must have books for all COM developers.

Rating:
Summary: An excellent book for a wide range of readers
Review: This is perhaps the best book I've ever read covering a technical subject for Windows programming.

Introductory chapters include a fine overview of non-distributed COM technology for those new to the topic, while the later chapters go into thorough detail on both the details of interfaces and the reasons those details exist. The "code samples" break the horrid tradition of Windows programming examples by including thorough textual explanations of the code and even detailed instructions for using development tool interface elements unlikely to be familiar to readers seeking the information the book covers.

I'm very impressed by the way Dr. Grimes both provides the new information for which I bought the book and gracefully includes the background material a new COM user would need to understand the DCOM material.

Other writers on MS Windows programming, especially those at Microsoft, would do well to look at this book's style and format.