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Rating: 
Summary: One more time BRAVO !
Review: After being one of authors in the excellent book "Using Visual C++ 6.0" (Please read my comment at book ISBN: 0789716356), Mr. Bates just showed that Writing COM objects can be easy for everybody. Book is not so excellent as the upper one, it lacks "Margin Text", but it deserves 5 starts.What I like in this book is following: I am not good Visual C++ programmer I just started to use VC and I highly recoment "Using Visual C++ 6.0" for everybody starting like me. But THIS book really enables you to: - make COM object using wizard - to add functions and methods to your class/COM - to call it from other program. You learn this in about first 100 pages. Following chapters are going into more details and more different problems. But the GOAL is here. You have developed COM, now you need to know some C++ language to implement functions but that has nothing to do with COM any more. So the goal is reached - I repeat. Every chapter it has its' short and easy to understand example. Every chapter has only one goal, so you don't have to read whole book to find thing you need. You can develop your first COM in a afternoon. This book is "must have" for beginers in COM. By the end of the book you will be teached well and you will learn things for pros (which I am not...:) what makes this book good for advanced users too. For you to see if this (my) review works for you I have to tell you that I am Delphi programmer and I know about object oriented programming and windows programming and about Win32 API but I didn't know anything about COMs, and ether I NEVER developed COM before, not even in Delphi. Therefore I think that this book is for everybody (and especially for beginners) and that you don't need superior knowledge about COM or VC. I also have another book: ISBN: 0130231142, "Understanding and programming COM+" by R.J. Oberg but I think that this one is not so good as one by J. Bates. And for the end: MR. Bates don't forget Margin hints in the next book, people forget things, it would be nice to have some hints such as in "Using Visual C++ 6". I hope to read your next programming book soon.
Rating:
Summary: Best "sit-down and read" book for ATL
Review: Good balance of explanatory text, diagrams, screen snapshots, and code. Compared to the 3 other ATL books I've read (ATL Internals, both the beginning and professional Wrox books on ATL) this book easier to understand and is suitable for straight reading. The other books are better suited as references. This book will get you up to speed on ATL and COM quickly, and it covers a lot of good topics, including ADO, OLE-DB, NT services & DCOM, connection points, and most of the stuff you would expect from an ATL book.
Rating:
Summary: Surprise, what a good book!
Review: I agree to one of other reviewers: The auther got a good balance among explanatory text, diagrams, screen snapshots, and example code. When I read this book, I keep asking myself how this guy knows so many details!
Rating: 
Summary: Nice Coverage
Review: I have had this book for close to 3 years now. When I bought it I was just getting into c++ so it was kind of difficult but as I got more comfortable with the language I started to appreciate this book for what it is. This is a good buy for anyone who wants to go into ATL programming. I was especially happy with the coverage of connection points structured storage and enumerators/collections. The coverage of these topics was a great help when I was developing a DOM and SAX implemantation for an XML parser I am writing. However considering the .NET move in today's world this book may become a dinosaur soon but for anybody who needs to write ATL code, this is a great buy. "ATL internals" is propably the best ATL book though.
Rating:
Summary: A very good buy
Review: I have only recently started using COM in my applications, and needed a good book to explain not only COM/DCOM but also ATL. This book is a very good, step-by-step, readable resource that should help any Borland or Visual C++ programmer. I am a Borland C++ Builder user, and the book uses mostly examples and source from Visual C++. The author explains the concepts in such a good way that I have had no trouble at all using the Visual C++ compiler and I was experimenting away in no time. The book also has great DCOM sections, explaining all the nitty gritty and extra features in simple english. This is a must have for anybody who wants to get into COM/DCOM and ATL rapidly. Great book!
Rating: 
Summary: Not a good book
Review: If you want to know how to create a COM object using ATL step-by-step, get this book. I have ATL Internals and Inside COM, both are very good, but for the beginner wanting to make a COM object _now_, they don't compare to this book. Get this book - it won't dissapoint you.
Rating:
Summary: Comprehensive Guide to ATL
Review: The book consists of 4 parts: 1.Building ATL COM Clients and Servers (a brief introduction in COM theory and ATL). 2.Implementing COM Techniques in ATL. 3.Windowing and ActiveX Controls in ATL. 4.Developing ATL-based Database Applications. This book gives an extremely brief explanation of COM technique and is focused on how ATL facilitates and dramatically increases speed of implementing COM. All explanations are quite clear and comprehensive (if only a book on COM and ATL can be comprehensive). Some minor inaccuracies don't spoil the whole impression. I recommend this book to anyone interested in learning ATL. About its prerequisites. Mr. Bates claims that of course you should have experience of C++ programming in a Windows environment, but that you don't need to have any experience of COM/DCOM. In my opinion, to get the most of the book you should at least have already read Inside COM by Dale Rogerson. Even better if you read Essential COM by Don Box as the second book, and only then this book. In any case starting this book as the first COM reading would be too hard.
Rating:
Summary: Great all around book for ATL
Review: This book is a breeze to read, the author made it as much as a no brainer as possible. Unlike books written on the same subject by Wrox, which is extremely dry. The beginner's topic on STL and the usage of STL libraries is a great starter for those who are not familiar with template programming. Fundamental topics like string handling, data type manipulation however should warrant a topic in itself, rather than being grouped together as a sub section. Eg. Safe Arrays, Variant Type, OLE/BSTRs strings and its many conversions. However it is still easy enough to pick up from the tons of examples that's available. The author also made sure that concepts like Smart Pointers and the different ways to initialize a COM object is clarified early to the reader. Sadly, the topic on NT services was short, as the author has made it clear that they didn't want to cover it much. However should the author come up with a whole book dedicated to NT Services, MMC Snap-In development I would be the first to get it! The topis covered on OLE-DB and the ADO object are adequate and a whole lot better compared to the many books out there that hardly even talk about it - why develop in COM if you're not going to use the database?. There's also a smattering of information such as NT's handling of security and persisting data from COM. This book is well worth your time and money. Can't wait to get the .NET version! (Hopefully, ATL is still around by then)
Rating: 
Summary: One word: Sucktacular!
Review: This isn't the most famous nor the most recommended of ATL books (compared to ATL Internals and Richard Grimes's books), but I recommend it highly. I don't plan to become an ATL or COM expert any time soon, and I quickly found information here that wasn't available (or wasn't as well explained) in other sources. This book helped me a lot in creating an Automation-compatible enumeration interface that VB can use with its "for each" construct, and testing this interface from C++ (which can be complicated). It's not a classic (only classics deserve 5 stars), but it's been of sound practical use to me, and that's high praise indeed.
Rating:
Summary: Mistakes like this are unacceptable
Review: To be fair, I have not read the entire book. I bought this book and "Developer's workshop to COM and ATL 3.0" and I read the threading model part in both, cause I needed to find something out straight away. To my surprise, Bates mentions in page 168 the following: "(Windows shares time slices between processes, not theads!)" (the exclamation mark is in the book). Call me weird, but mistakes like this really bother me. I begin to question the author's credibility and when this happens, I can't enjoy reading a technical book. I keep thinking that maybe something else I read is going to be horribly wrong and I don't like to have to question everything (too time consuming). As far as explaining threading, the "workshop" book is MUCH better. 2 stars is the top I would give if the rest of the book is excellent.
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