>I try to avoid parameters, relying on properties that can be populated before invoking a method - it makes things easy if you find yourself having to pass the same value around as a parameter. It also simplifies deployment considerably; passing parameters by reference to an out-of-process server, especially a remote out-of-process server, may be unpredictable, and if you use the OLE interface, translation between data representations in different languages is handled neatly and automatically.

How so?

Also, keep in mind that a COM property assignment is just a method call
anyway, so you're not saving yourself anything by doing so. In fact,
if you're worried about remote components, you want to try to pass as
many things in a single method call as possible to avoid the remote
protocol overhead incurred by roundtrips.

+++ Rick ---