Component Object Model

Microsoft COM Website

DCOM for Windows 95 and Windows 98

OPC and DCOM Security (link to separate page)

Useful Documents from Microsoft

Links to Other Sites

Microsoft COM Website

Microsoft's website has a useful section on COM, the Component Object Model.

DCOM for Windows 95 and Windows 98

At the time the first OPC specification was published, there were severe functionality limitations except when using the Windows NT platform. In particular, only in-process OPC servers were supported.

This changed with the 1997 release of DCOM for Windows 95. Apart from the ability to configure clients and servers to be remote, DCOM for Windows 95 updated the OLE/COM system libraries so that marshaling of OPC parameters between (local) processes was handled properly. This allowed many OPC applications to fully support Windows 95 and Windows 98 as well as NT.

The final version of DCOM for Windows 95 is 1.3, released in April 1999. DCOM for Windows 95 is no longer supported by Microsoft.

DCOM for Windows 95 is freely downloadable from Microsoft at www.microsoft.com/com/.

Windows 98 included built-in DCOM support, but un upgrade to version 1.3 of DCOM for Windows 98 may also be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/com/.

Note that DCOM for Windows 95 is redistributable, while DCOM for Windows 98 is not.

Useful Documents from Microsoft

The COM Programmer's Cookbook
Crispin Goswell / Microsoft Corp.
msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/dncomg/html/msdn_com_co.asp

Links to Other Sites

Cetus Links has a vast and comprehensive list of COM related links.

The extensive archives of the Microsoft DCOM mailing list may be searched at discussms.hosting.lsoft.com/archives/dcom.html.