Network, Computer and Programming Resources

Network - COM (Common Object Model)

COM is an object-oriented, open architecture that is intended to allow client/server applications to communicate with each other in a transparent manner, even if these applications are running on different platforms. Objects can also be distributed over different platforms. The COM model is a joint project of Microsoft and Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC). Their immediate goal is to allow networks or machines that use Microsoft's Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology to communicate transparently with networks or machines that use DEC's ObjectBroker technology. To provide the cross-platform capabilities, COM uses OLE COM, a protocol based on the DCE/RPC (Distributed Computing Environment/Remote Procedure Call) protocol. Once implemented, COM will allow machines running Microsoft Windows, Windows NT, and Macintosh environments to communicate in a transparent manner with machines running DEC's OpenVMS operating system or any of several UNIX implementations. COMPARE ObjectBroker; OLE (Object Linking and Embedding)