Memoirs of a Developer

Industry unlike hobby programming demands a different model of development to hobby oriented approach. For all those who have been working in industry for quite a while, they will know a good deal about COM+ objects and their uses. On the other hand programmers who are still fresh out of their training centers, might be more aware of the latest trends in areas such as Microsoft .NET and Java object oriented programming.

Although COM programming is now considered to be a dated technology, there are still a lot of COM+ objects in circulation. This makes it impractical to phase out the use of COM+ objects. Thankfully Microsoft catered for such circumstances by adding support for COM+ object references in the .NET Framework. These can be seen in the diagram below:

Apart from support for referencing COM+ objects, Microsoft also added support for the development of .NET objects which can be exposed using a COM+ wrapper. This enables programmers to develop applications with the latest technologies and give languages that can reference COM+ objects the power of using these objects. This can be done by tagging the assembly as a COM+ visible assembly and optionally assigning a strong name to the assembly (some COM+ objects require this feature).

COM+ to date is still essential when developing enterprise applications. Unless the projects are completely .NET related, it is essential that COM+ objects are not shied away from because this might increase a company’s costs in man power and time to redevelop its legacy objects.

Links:

• Microsoft
• Understanding Classic COM Interoperability With .NET Applications