This book explores COM from the perspective of a C++ developer. Written by a leading expert on the COM component object model, it reveals the essence of COM, helping developers to properly understand not only the methods of the COM programming model, but also its foundation. Understanding the motivations for creating COM and its distributed systems aspects is extremely important for those developers who want to go beyond the simplest COM applications and become truly effective COM programmers. By showing why Distributed COM works the way it does, Don Box empowers you to apply the model creatively and effectively to everyday programming tasks.