COM, COM+, DCOM, where to start?

Question

I am curious about COM+, DCOM. I know that MSFT does not encourage you to use this tools natively (meaning with C/C++, in fact there is not a lot of documentation available)

Answer 1

COM, COM+ and DCOM are three completely different things. At this point, there is very little reason to learn COM and almost no reason to learn DCOM. The only reason I can think of is if you have to maintain or integrate legacy components. COM+ is still used because it allows for out of process hosting of components and nice things like distributed transaction management.

The best way to start writing up some COM is using ATL. In .NET COM+ is called Enterprise Services.

The best book I know on COM is Don Box's Essential COM and Tim Ewald's COM+ book is excellent too.