Win32 System Services: The Heart of Windows® 98 and Windows® 2000

18.1. COM Fundamentals

The Component Object Model defines several fundamental concepts that provide the model's structural underpinnings:

• A binary standard for function calling between components.

• A provision for strongly typed groupings of functions into interfaces.

• A base interface providing

  1. A way for components to dynamically discover the interfaces implemented by other components.

  2. Reference counting, to allow components to track their own lifetimes and delete themselves when appropriate.

• A mechanism to uniquely identify components and their interfaces.

• A "component loader" to set up component interactions and, additionally, in the cross-process and cross-network cases, to help manage component interactions.

BINARY STANDARD

John VonNeumann was a ...