COM calls reentering in STA
 
I wrote an exe COM server and its client, which is an Office COM addin. All 
unmanaged using ATL. Client and server use STA. The client initially passes 
in a callback pointer the server will use to call its methods. The server is 
multithreaded so it uses the GIT table to marshall calls to the client.  The 
problem I have it that calls from multiple server threads, made to the same 
client object and method, reenter in the client instead of waiting until the 
first call has returned.  For example, if during the first call the client 
does some trivial COM call like QueryInterface, a second call from server 
comes in, reentering the method which is stilll processing the first call. 
(All works well if I slow things down so the server does only one operation 
at a time.)
Trace statements in the server confirm that it is making the second call 
(from a second thread) before the first has returned, and that the two calls 
are using different marshalled pointers, indicating that each thread has a 
different proxy pointer from the GIT.
So I wonder if this is expected behavior.  The idea that using the 
marshalled pointer switches threads so the calls all originate from one 
thread may be true behind the scenes, but does not seem to be enough to 
provide serialization of the calls.  Why does the main thread not wait for 
the COM call to return before resuming execution?  If COM does not serialize 
the calls, what do I have to do to serialize them?
--
Scott McPhillips [VC++ MVP]