I was thinking COM was dead until I got straightened out by some folks here on the UT and at a couple of MS demos.


COM isn't dead. It might get called something else, but it will be here as long as Windows As We Know It (TM) is around. All of NT is basically "built on COM" - interprocess communication, Service control, all the apps you use, all use COM or Enterprise Java beans or CORBA.


The current problem with COM is that you have to really know what you're doing to get good results (the same is true of EJB,etc). Microsoft is a commodity seller, and they need a way to mass-sell their object model/platform to a wider audience to stay dominant.


So the XML push by MS looks two-pronged to me:

1. Make app messaging/communication/sharing on Windows easier to do by leveraging XML resources out there, and use them as a wrapper or veil around what still has to get done with COM. They also get the benefit of leveraging all of the non-MS technologies/books/etc out there, since as long as they stay close to the W3C standard, concepts you apply elsewhere will work on Win32.

2. Instead of trying to port the COM subsytem everywhere, MS is focusing on interoperability. I really woke up to that one at a BizTalk2000 demo (it's free in your area, check it out). MS is saying "keep Windows desktops and Office and IE there, they read/write XML" while also saying "keep your Oracle/Slowlaris backend, just make them output XML." Now MS's competitors have nowhere to go if they try to push a Java-based client, for example, since all apps (whether MS or not) will speak XML. MS has also said "we will do XML infrastructure better than everyone else" with things like MSSQL2K reading/writing XML and BizTalk Functoids, and there they have the advantage because they have enough money to hire the best minds around (eg., they recently hired the guy from the JPL who "invented" OLAP and can afford to give away multimillion $ technology for free in MSSQL and Excel2K).

Um, I'm deviating a little here. Anyway, at the BizTalk demo, they showed a VB fat client entry form. After form submission, the data went as XML thru MSMQ, it was evaluated, and an XML message was sent back and shown as a messagebox. He scrolled through the source code quickly, but I definitely saw GetObject() in the code - that *is* COM. You can't do Win32 without COM, period. In Win2K or .NET, you'll use the COM+, you'll use MSMQ, you'll use SOAP, but you probably won't have to see it unless you want to (ie "know what you are doing").


example of

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>>Complete ignoramous who knows nothing about the software development environment in today's businesses. COM is being used more heavily than ever in today's business environments and it's popularity is growing. COM+ will only further the practically of the COM solution and provide a clear migration path for current COM applications with minimal modifications.
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>>XML is NOT a replacement for COM. COM+ will take COM's place but only after a year or so. If anything is going to be phased out, it's MTS.
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>>-JT
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>Nope. MTS is still there. It's just not called MTS. Under NT, MTS sat ontop of the OS. With Windows 2000, it's integrated into the OS as part of COM+.