COM And ActiveX

This is where I will have COM And ActiveX stuff. Currently I have only a couple of things.

Introduction to COM Automation (a work in progress)

Sequential Stream Server: Automation sample with a simple implementation of the ISequentialStream standard interface.

Message Server: Automation sample with a simple custom interface.

Sample of the Registry Entries for a Simple COM Object

What is ActiveX (random material about confusing terminology)

Articles

The From CPP to COM article is worthwhile to read.

Samples

I am using various SDK samples to learn from; a couple of them are:

• The DCOM Simple Sample (titled "Simple: Simple Network OLE Sample"). It is a good sample of a server that uses a standard interface.
• The "Dispcalc: Automation Sample" described in Locating Resources to Study Automation (Q152023). The sample seems to not be available anymore from Microsoft.

Since the DCOM Simple Sample server and the OLE Automation Marshaller sample server do not have a type library or an IDispatch interface, they cannot be accessed from most any development facility (compiled or script) other than C and C++.

I will try to (briefly) describe the DCOM Simple Sample. That sample consists of both a server and a client and they are both console programs. The server has a CClassFactory class derived from IClassFactory and a CSimpleObject class derived from IStream. The client uses CoCreateInstanceEx to create a CLSID_SimpleObject and then gets a IStream* from the (first) MULTI_QI structure.

This web page was last updated: January 08, 2002

See my Visual C++ Programmer Stuff page for more C++ stuff.