Preface
Welcome to C# COM+ Programming. If you have purchased this book or are currently
contemplating this purchase, you may have a number of questions you are hoping
this book will answer. The most common questions I get are “Is COM+ dead?” and
“What is COM+’s role in .NET applications?” The answer to the first question is a
definite “no”! The COM+ technology that Microsoft has included with Windows 2000
is still available to .NET programmers. In fact, some COM+ technologies that were
previously available only to C++ programmers can now be used by Visual Basic .NET
and C# programmers. The second question is always a little harder to answer. The
typical response you would get from me is “it depends.” The technologies found in
COM+ such as distributed transactions and queued components can be found only in
COM+. The question to ask yourself when trying to decide if you should use a particular
COM+ service is “Do I need this service in my application?” If the answer is yes,
then feel free to use COM+. If the answer is no, then COM+ is not a good fit for your
application.
All of the code examples used in the book use the new programming language
C#. C# is an object-oriented programming language developed specifically for
.NET. In fact, .NET applications are the only applications you can write with C#.
Throughout the book I point out the language features of C# that can help you
write better COM+ components. Although all of the code is in C#, the examples can
also be rewritten in C++ if you like.