COM and DCOM OS Design Development (Windows CE 5.0)

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The Component Object Model (COM) is an operating system-independent object-oriented system for creating binary software components that can interact with other COM-based components in the same process space, in other processes, or on remote computers.

The following levels of run-time support for COM-based applications are supported:

  • Minimal COM provides a baseline API set for COM object creation. This Catalog item requires about 10–20K of memory and is only available in headless OS designs.
  • COM provides a midrange implementation of COM and Automation that supports only in-process free-threaded objects and requires about 100–200K of memory.
  • The Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) provides a full-featured COM implementation equivalent to Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 SP5 and requires more than 700K of memory.

In addition, you can add storage functionality to any one of the three COM implementations by adding the COM Storage Catalog item.

OS Design Information

The following table shows operating system design information for COM and DCOM.

Concept Description
Dependencies None
Hardware considerations None

Modules and Components

The following table shows the components and modules that implement COM and DCOM.

Item Module Component
Minimal COM uuid, ole32, oleaut32, mcombase, mcommem, mcomstr, mcommon, mcomlib, ole232, docfile, msf, exp None
COM uuid, ole32, oleaut32, ole232, com, docfile, msf, exp None
DCOM dllhost, dcomssd, rpcrt4, rpcltccm, rpcltscm, ole32, oleaut32, uuid, dcomole, idisproxy None
COM Storage stg or mcomstm, depending on the previous COM choices None

Implementation Considerations

The following table shows the Sysgen variables that control COM and DCOM Catalog items.

Sysgen variable Description
SYSGEN_OLE Adds a midrange implementation of COM and Automation that supports only in-process free-threaded objects.
SYSGEN_OLE_GUIDS Adds support for CoCreateGuid used with the standard COM implementation.
SYSGEN_OLE_STG Adds structured storage functionality to the standard COM implementation.
SYSGEN_DCOM Adds a full-featured COM implementation equivalent to Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 Service Pack 5 (SP5) that can include remote COM and Automation marshaling.
SYSGEN_DCOM_STG Adds structured storage functionality to DCOM.
SYSGEN_DCOM_REMOTEACCESS Adds COM remote access.
SYSGEN_MINICOM Adds a minimal COM implementation that provides a baseline API for COM object creation.
SYSGEN_MINICOM_GUIDS Adds support for CoCreateGuid used with the minimal COM implementation.
SYSGEN_MINICOM_STG Adds structured storage functionality to the minimal COM implementation.

Application Development Topics

Component Services (COM and DCOM)

COM and DCOM Registry Settings

Automation

OLE Compound Documents

COM and DCOM Security

COM Threads and Processes

Transport Protocols

Creating and Initializing COM Objects

Marshaling Support

See Also

Component Services (COM and DCOM)

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