The Component Object Model

The Component Object Model (COM) is the base technology of OLE, a broad set of object-oriented technology standards. OLE includes, besides COM, object design standards at a higher level. Among these are standards for OLE Structured Storage, OLE Compound Documents, and OLE Controls. COM is the binary standard that defines the means for applications to interact within these technology standards.

To understand COM (and therefore all OLE technologies), it is crucial to bear in mind that it is not an object-oriented language, but a standard. Nor does COM specify how an application should be structured. Language, structure, and implementation details are left to the application programmer. COM does specify an object model and programming requirements that enable COM objects (also called OLE Components, or sometimes simply objects) to interact with other objects. These objects can be within a single process, in other processes, even on remote machines. They can have been written in other languages, and may be structurally quite dissimilar. That is why COM is referred to as a binary standard it is a standard that applies after a program has been translated to binary machine code.

The only language requirement for COM is that code is generated in a language that can create structures of pointers and, either explicitly or implicitly, call functions through pointers. Object-oriented languages such as C++ and Smalltalk provide programming mechanisms that simplify the implementation of COM objects, but languages such as C, Pascal, Ada, and even BASIC programming environments can create and use OLE objects.

COM defines the essential nature of an OLE Component. In general, a software object is made up of a set of data and the functions that manipulate the data. An OLE Component is one in which access to an object's data is achieved exclusively through one or more sets of related functions. These function sets are called interfaces, and the functions of an interface are called methods. Further, COM requires that the only way to gain access to the methods of an interface is through a pointer to the interface.

Besides specifying the basic binary object standard, COM defines certain basic interfaces that provide function common to all COM-based technologies. It also provides a small number of API functions that all components require.

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