Com and DCOM: Micrsoft's Vision for Distributed Objects

Roger Session's book, COM and DCOM, Microsoft's Vision for Distributed Objects, was an extremely useful source for my understanding Microsoft's distributed componenent architecture vision. It deals with the big picture with useful examples so that the reader has a technology map before getting lost in the details. The book focuses on Microsoft, it has an admitted bias towards them, and it is already somewhat dated. Nevertheless it was a valuable primer for helping me to understand some of the core concepts of next generation distributed systems. For example, the section on clusters (code name Microsoft Wolfpack) creates an excellent analogy to help understand more clearly the issues and benefits of replacing single super mainframe computers with multiple pooled cheap PCs.

Reading the various customer reviews, it is clear that people either love this book, or hate it. I think this is because it is difficult book to classify. Given the title, one would suspect that it is a technical primer -- and for those who expected a book to help them program DCOM applications, they have come to completely the wrong place. THIS IS NOT A BOOK FOR PROGRAMMERS! For those who have given the book a 1 star review because it doesn't explain the technical details: I agree - go buy "Inside Distributed COM".However, what the book is _extremely_ good at is explaining what all this COM and DCOM stuff is to non-technical people. Developers and Programmers often forget that there are many people in their organisation who have no idea what they are really working on, and there is a real need to help educate this constituency.Is it biased? Yes. Does it present the CORBA v. COM debate fairly? No. Is it a Microsoft PR piece? Yes.But if you are a Microsoft house, who cares?Today, I had a product manager come to me asking for an explaination of the "architecture" we developers keep talking about. We keep on going on about how great "Three-tier" is, and how it will make everything better - but most of the organisation has no idea what we are really talking about. I had absolutely no hesitation in suggesting that my colleague read Session's book, and I have no doubt she will walk away from it with a better understanding of what we are doing.What more can you ask?

This is a great overview of Microsoft's technology strategy (DNA). Roger presents a high-level overview of the difficult concepts of distributed computing and the technologies behind them. This is a great book for technology professionals who have never touched distributed computing and/or enterprise issues. Roger explains the problems of trying to scale up existing programs, and the numerous issues involved in scaling. I liked Roger's perspective on the whole OO debate/religion (i.e. CORBA vs COM). His attitude is to let the best technology win, and don't fall into the religious wars.

This author is lucky there are so few books on the subject thus far. This book only serves to confuse and I would not recommend it to anyone. There are two good books on the subject thus far that I have read. The first is the Internet Information Server Resource Kit. The second is Microsoft Transaction Server 2.0 by Roger Jennings

I enjoyed reading this book. It is an excellent high level overview of how to work with COM and DCOM with Java and Visual Basic. You also learn about the MS strategy (to overthrow the world) concerning clustering and transaction processing.