COM

COM is a technology that allows defining software components so that they can be used from a variety of programming languages. It allows components to be used from the same process, from a different process and also from a process running on a remote computer.

Advantages

Language independence
Very good support - many Microsoft technologies (Office, IE) still rely massively on COM
Seamless usage from more modern technologies, such as .NET

Disadvantages

Complex implementation
Memory management is reference counted, which means circular references can cause issues
Global registry information storage can cause problems with different versions of the components

Derived technologies

ActiveX
COM+
DCOM
OLE
OLE Automation

Development tools

Microsoft Visual Studio
C++

Recent posts on our blog

4 ways to build a killer mobile app

Aug 25, 2017, by Dragos

There still is a lot of growth potential in the mobile industry. There are untapped areas that will be discovered in the near future. You can do it as well, therefore this is the right time to choose a mobile development career.... read more

Hadoop: the future is now - and it's all about Big Data

Jun 05, 2017, by Dragos

Apache Hadoop is an open-source software written in Java, a framework that allows for the distributed processing of very large data sets across clusters of computers.... read more

Linux goes down in history: a mature operating system

Mar 14, 2017, by AdrianC

As we’ve seen in the second part of this series, the number of Linux distros has increased rapidly, as the Open Source community responded in a positive manner to the flexibility of the Linux kernel.... read more