Is COM an 'outdated' technology?

Dave Kerr

COM is rather long in the tooth nowadays, but by no means an outdated technology. It is one of the most successful and long-lasting mechanisms that allow different programming languages to share objects and functionality - as well as allowing programmatic access to a variety of applications and system resources. Almost everything you do with the Windows Shell (i.e. not creating Win32 programs but accessing the task bars, folder icons etc etc) uses COM. And as mentioned in a later post Windows 8 will be using it even more - as COM interfaces can be used by C++ apps, Managed Apps etc etc. It is interesting as well to note the influence of com in managed applications - does the entry point of a C# app look familiar?

[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
}

As a hint, STA stands for single thread apartment model...

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clientSurfer

Pete O'Hanlon wrote:

Ah, the beauty of IQueryInterface and IUnknown.

Indeed! I wrote the first Web app for Dell Financial Services back in '98 in 1500 lines of Visual C++ 6.0 code using mostly IQueryInterface and IUnknown to control MS Word as a COM server fueled by Oracle 6.1/OWAS. Uphill both ways. Man those reference counts used to trip me up every time. Not to mention all the old Win32API methods that are available (all I know for sure is they were up through Vista) and are actually necessary to do any kind of low-level WinForms development, even in C#...

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CPallini

krumia wrote:

Is COM an 'outdated' technology?

Nope. :)

Veni, vidi, vici.

CPallini

Pete O'Hanlon wrote:

IQueryInterface

Do you mean QueryInterface?

Veni, vidi, vici.

CPallini

Erudite_Eric wrote:

I never thought COM offered anything better than properly designed dlls

It actually did.

Erudite_Eric wrote:

but I guess it got replaced with .NNet stuf

Nope.

Erudite_Eric wrote:

But yeah, I think it died.

Nope.

Veni, vidi, vici.

Pete OHanlon

I do indeed, and shows I shouldn't rush my answers when typing. I was going for IUnkown originally then threw in QueryInterface. This is the problem when posting from your phone.

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krumia

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Dalek Dave

What is .NNet?

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CPallini

A managed typo.

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Dalek Dave

Manage this upvote I gave you!

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CPallini

...Collected! :-D

Veni, vidi, vici.

RugbyLeague

I seem to recall Don Box sitting on stage at Tech-Ed in Barcelona some years ago writing .Net code and saying something along the lines of "What the hell was I thinking for all those years"

Lost User

CPallini wrote:

It actually did.

Yeah, it stopped idiot programers making a mess of the system I suppose.

============================== Nothing to say.

CPallini

Nope, it is all about binary components re-using (as the name suggests).

Veni, vidi, vici.

Eytukan

COM is dead? But ask "where?". COM is dead in user applications. There used to be tons of classic Asp, VB6.0 & even VC 6++ solutions that made extensive use of COM, DCOM, ActiveX etc.In these places, for example COM is literally dead. If a clients requests for a solution for their business, the application developers would no more need to look out for COM. So much has evolved in the managed world. Microsoft took pain to carry all those complex COM on their shoulders. Giving you the option to develop in much simpler tools. For example, DCOM is replaced by remoting in Dotnet, WCF & so many new frameworks give you much cleaner interface for your distributed apps. If you look at COM generated marshalling code, it'd look like it's done by a drunk php coder ;P. But COM is still there in every other places. For example, UMDF (driver framework, uses COM). So the idea is this, if you really need COM, it's there.

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Lost User

CPallini wrote:

Nope, it is all about binary components re-using (as the name suggests).

I was always told it was a way to avoid DLL hell. Of course if people renamed funcs when they changed the parameters in dlls we wouldnt have had that problem. I have used COM, never found it any better that a dll, and the installation is a PITA.

============================== Nothing to say.

CPallini

Erudite_Eric wrote:

I was always told it was a way to avoid DLL hell.

That's a really naive point.

Veni, vidi, vici.

Espen Harlinn

Succinct ;)

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Lost User

:thumbsup: Well said :)

Computers have been intelligent for a long time now. It just so happens that the program writers are about as effective as a room full of monkeys trying to crank out a copy of Hamlet.

adityarao31

I am new to COM,DCOM,I am a MFC Programmer. Is it wise to study COM,DCOM at this time? Does microsoft will remove the support for this architecture in near future? Please help me on this issue as its very important for my career

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