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	"created_at": "2026-04-06T00:06:10.368007Z",
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	"title": "The Component Object Model - Win32 apps",
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	"plain_text": "The Component Object Model - Win32 apps\r\nBy stevewhims\r\nArchived: 2026-04-05 15:18:08 UTC\r\nThe Microsoft Component Object Model (COM) is a platform-independent, distributed, object-oriented system\r\nfor creating binary software components that can interact. COM is the foundation technology for Microsoft's OLE\r\n(compound documents), ActiveX (Internet-enabled components), as well as others.\r\nTo understand COM (and therefore all COM-based technologies), it is crucial to understand that it is not an\r\nobject-oriented language but a standard. Nor does COM specify how an application should be structured;\r\nlanguage, structure, and implementation details are left to the application developer. Rather, COM specifies an\r\nobject model and programming requirements that enable COM objects (also called COM components, or\r\nsometimes simply objects) to interact with other objects. These objects can be within a single process, in other\r\nprocesses, and can even be on remote computers. They can be written in different languages, and they may be\r\nstructurally quite dissimilar, which is why COM is referred to as a binary standard; a standard that applies after a\r\nprogram has been translated to binary machine code.\r\nThe only language requirement for COM is that code is generated in a language that can create structures of\r\npointers and, either explicitly or implicitly, call functions through pointers. Object-oriented languages such as C++\r\nand Smalltalk provide programming mechanisms that simplify the implementation of COM objects, but languages\r\nsuch as C, Java, and VBScript can be used to create and use COM objects.\r\nCOM defines the essential nature of a COM object. In general, a software object is made up of a set of data and\r\nthe functions that manipulate the data. A COM object is one in which access to an object's data is achieved\r\nexclusively through one or more sets of related functions. These function sets are called interfaces, and the\r\nfunctions of an interface are called methods. Further, COM requires that the only way to gain access to the\r\nmethods of an interface is through a pointer to the interface.\r\nBesides specifying the basic binary object standard, COM defines certain basic interfaces that provide functions\r\ncommon to all COM-based technologies, and it provides a small number of functions that all components require.\r\nCOM also defines how objects work together over a distributed environment and has added security features to\r\nhelp provide system and component integrity.\r\nThe following topics in this section describe basic COM issues related to designing COM objects:\r\nCOM Objects and Interfaces\r\nUsing and Implementing IUnknown\r\nReusing Objects\r\nThe COM Library\r\nManaging Memory Allocation\r\nhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ms694363.aspx\r\nPage 1 of 2\n\nSource: https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ms694363.aspx\r\nhttps://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ms694363.aspx\r\nPage 2 of 2",
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	"language": "EN",
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