> At 09:28 16-11-2000 -0400, you wrote:
> >Can someone tell me what DCOM and COM are?
> >Is it a component for VB scripting, that is the only thing I know of for
> >COM.
> >Thanks
> 
> I'm not an expert in this field, but I beleive:
> 
> COM lets components written in different compiled languages work together -
> e.g. a DLL written in Delphi can call a function in a DLL written in MS C++.
> 

Kind of, but what is exposed is the Objects of the component and their
methods and attributes, etc. COM is a software design model that allows
you to assemble applications that share functionality.

An example is the spell checker, Outlook, Word and any other Microsoft
desktop apps that run spellcheckers are all using the same spellchecker in
one of the components within Windows (I forget which - I _have_ used it
once, but I just recorded a macro in Word of me spellchecking some text
and had a look to see what I'd recorded - real script-kiddie, I know, but
hey, it worked). The advantage is that you can, of course, use them in
your own apps as long as you know the syntax.

The component object model allows the functionality of the code to be
exposed for use by third parties whilst the source code is unavailable for
modification by those same third parties. COM is really just an
architecture that allows pre-compiled chunks of code to be moved between
environments without their fail. The compiled code is
environment-independant and platform-independent because the underlying
support exists within the OS to allow that.

Daniel Walker
Wrox Press