Product Description

As well as telling you how ATL works, the book is full of examples illustrating the concepts. We cover connection points, collections, enumerations; explain how ATL handles IDispatch, error objects; persistence interfaces and how to extend them, explain how ATL handles ambient and stock properties; property maps, message maps, property pages, initializing properties via scripting and >PARAM< tags;

We also explain various ways of marshaling, threading, and how ATL handles the various models. We cover DCOM related topics like using surrogates to remote DLL servers and writing remote EXE servers (we develop a class and a sample client that calls the class inproc, local, via a surrogate, and remote). The final chapter develops a full control that is scriptable and has complex properties that can be initialized in IE and in VB, and set via a property page

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #868019 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 491 pages

From the Publisher
The book is primarily for Visual C++ developers (although ATL is freely available from Microsoft's web site at present). The reader will probably be fairly experienced in using MFC, and may well have used the Wizards to produce simple MFC controls in the past. The book is ideal for people who need to get to grips with the principles of COM and the ways in which ATL handles much of the complexity for the programmer.

The book is a logical next step for people who have read Beginning Visual C++ 5. The back of Beginning Visual C++5, which is in CompUSA, points consumers to this book.

About the Author
Richard Grimes
ATL took hold of Richard while he was part of a team developing a COM-based workflow system. Its elegance and symplicity had a lasting effect on him. Now, although Richard does not live an obsessively pure COM lifestyle, he finds that ATL gives him more time to enjoy his garden. Richard writes and advises on COM and ATL, and can be contacted via email at atl.dev@grimes.demon.co.uk.

George Reilly
George V. Reilly is a graduate of Trinity College Dublin and Brown University. He has been programming since 1982. He lives in Seattle where he works for Microsoft as a developer on the Internet Information Server team. He can be reached at gvr@halcyon.com.

Alex Stockton
Alex runs the World of ATL website when he's not writing and editing for Wrox Press. He can be contacted at alexs@wrox.com.

Julian Templeman
Orginally trained as a geologist, Julian got side-tracked into programming in the late 70's, and has never found his way back. After working in computer graphics and the oil industry, he now works for a London-based training and consultancy company, where he spends a large part of his time lecturing on C++ and Windows programming. He can be contacted at julian@groucho.demon.co.uk

Customer Reviews

prereqs: WIN32 and C++ ( no MFC or COM knowledge needed)
I have now finished reading this book - and am chuffed about how I am now traversing with ease various ATL examples I have found on the net. I give it four stars. Prior to reading it, I had no COM experince and no MFC experience (only win32api and c++).

BAD BITS: Like other readers, I found the chapter 2 client-from-server-wizard bit to be unsuitable. At the time I was still trying to grasp the main concepts. I just skipped that bit.

And also, perhaps the chapters are a bit long, they cover alot in one chapter.

GOODBITS: Comprehensive - for me, this book left no questions unanswered. If you reread a section you will eventually understand it. I constantly annotated with a pencil things such as "see pagexx", "see pagezz", But its all in there!

Well chosen examples - they like throwing in examples that expose the little technical quirks that I assume will be hard to figure out unaided. It is true that this would make a good reference aswell as a learning guide.

Technical detail - I like to know what is actually going on behind the scenes, and in all those macros. This book told me.

I thoroughly recommend this book for those with no MFC or COM experience. I would recommend re-reading chapters if you get lost. The examples aren't that important, (I think I did about 4 examples all up). Goodluck - its challenging, but what you are capable of when you get to the end is quite impressive.

Very good service... would like to buy more :)
I ordered this book and got it delivered very quickly and it actually arrived a bit earlier than expected, which is very nice. Good work and keep it up you guys... Tc

Fairly comprehensive but wordy
I suppose this covers a lot of what you need to know, but it takes so long about it. Referencing a server from a client and the section on threading were quite good.

I prefer ATL COM reference by the same author. More succinct and comprehensive.