Re: Is Component Object Model (COM) still popular now?

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 08 May 2009 07:46:05 +0200
Message-ID:
<gu0gr6$e8v$1@news.motzarella.org>
* red floyd:

blackbiscuit wrote:

Dear all,

I wonder whether COM is still a popular technology today. Meanwhile,
is COM deployed in some other OS?

Thank you very much!


Did you have a C++ language question?


It is, in a way.

COM is one of the few successful C++ component technologies, if not the only one
(depending on one's definition of "successful"), and so it's very relevant to
know whether it's dead, and is on-topic in the same way as e.g. "Is Boost dead".

Some reduced and slightly modified versions of COM are used in e.g. Linux user
interface and in Firefox browser (XCOM). Original COM itself is however a
Windows-specific technology. But while it's necessarily used to interface to the
operating system and at higher levels in e.g. scripting, it's my impression that
it's now now not much used as a general C++ component technology, i.e., that use
of COM is something forced, not something desired and freely chosen. Microsoft
had plans to make COM more attractive via e.g. language extensions, the fabled
COM+ that in the end turned out as barely nothing more than a rebranding and
bundling of their MSMQ. But as a side-effect of that effort, their "attribute"
syntax endeth up in C++0x, so there's also a thread to standard C++... :-)

Cheers & hth.,

- Alf

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