COM & .NET Component Services

Designing Queued Component Interfaces

When a client makes calls to a queued component, it interacts with the recorder provided by COM+. No actual calls to the real object occur. So, at the time of the call, the client has no way to receive output from the method, nor can it tell whether the call succeeded or failed. Consequently, when you design an interface to be supported by a COM+ queued component, you must avoid any outgoing parameters on any interface method.

Specifically, do not use any [out], [in,out], or [retval] IDL attributes on your method parameters. When you import a component into the Component Services Explorer, COM+ inspects the interfaces supported by that component, and if it detects an output attribute, COM+ disables the queuing option for that interface.

If you develop your COM+ component using Visual Basic 6.0, you do not have direct access to your component IDL. Normally, this lack of access would not be a problem. However, Visual Basic, by default, treats method parameters as [in,out] parameters. If you expect your component to be accessed as a queued component, you have to explicitly use the Visual Basic ByVal attribute on your method parameters.

Tip

In the next version of Visual Basic, Visual Basic.NET, all parameters are, by default, passed in by value instead of by reference. See Chapter 10 for more information.

A different kind of a parameter returned from a method is its return value. You should avoid using custom HRESULT codes to indicate particular ...