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Text conversations and Windows messages had proved not to be flexible enough to allow sharing application features in a robust and extensible way, so COM was created as a new foundation, and OLE changed to OLE2.

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While OLE 1 was focused on compound documents, COM and OLE 2 were designed to address software components in general. The COM Application binary interface (ABI) was the same as the MAPI ABI (released in 1992), and like it was based on MSRPC and ultimately on the Open Group's DCE/RPC. In 1992, when version 3.1 of Windows was released, Microsoft released OLE 2 with its underlying object model. These were later adapted for use by other languages such as Visual C++.

A VBX is a packaged extension in the form of a dynamic-link library (DLL) that allows objects to be graphically placed in a form and manipulated by properties and methods. In 1991, Microsoft introduced Visual Basic Extensions (VBX) with Visual Basic 1.0. An example of a compound document is a spreadsheet embedded in a Word for Windows document: as changes are made to the spreadsheet within Excel, they appear automatically inside the Word document. It was introduced with Word for Windows and Excel in 1991, and was later included with Windows, starting with version 3.1 in 1992. Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), Microsoft's first object-based framework, was built on top of DDE and designed specifically for compound documents. These provided the foundation of many of the ideas behind COM.

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Antony Williams, who was involved in the creation of the COM architecture, later distributed two internal papers in Microsoft that embraced the concept of software components: Object Architecture: Dealing With the Unknown – or – Type Safety in a Dynamically Extensible Class Library in 1988 and On Inheritance: What It Means and How To Use It in 1990. One of the first methods of interprocess communication in Windows was Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE), first introduced in 1987, that allowed sending and receiving messages in so-called 'conversations' between applications. 4.3 Interface Definition Language and type libraries.This makes COM interfaces attractive for object-oriented C++ libraries that are to be used by clients compiled using different compiler versions. Unlike C++, COM provides a stable application binary interface (ABI) that does not change between compiler releases.

COM is very similar to other component software interface technologies, such as CORBA and Enterprise JavaBeans, although each has its own strengths and weaknesses. Networked DCOM uses binary proprietary formats, while WCF encourages the use of XML-based SOAP messaging. However, COM objects can be used with all. NET framework, and support for Web Services through the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF). For some applications, COM has been replaced at least to some extent by the Microsoft. The latter only implements a subset of the whole COM interface. The preferred method of 'inheritance' within COM is the creation of sub-objects to which method 'calls' are delegated.ĬOM is an interface technology defined and implemented as standard only on Microsoft Windows and Apple's Core Foundation 1.3 and later plug-in application programming interface (API).

Type conversion casting between different interfaces of an object is achieved through the QueryInterface method. The different allocation semantics of languages are accommodated by making objects responsible for their own creation and destruction through reference-counting. For well-authored components, COM allows reuse of objects with no knowledge of their internal implementation, as it forces component implementers to provide well-defined interfaces that are separated from the implementation. The essence of COM is a language-neutral way of implementing objects that can be used in environments different from the one in which they were created, even across machine boundaries. COM is the basis for several other Microsoft technologies and frameworks, including OLE, OLE Automation, Browser Helper Object, ActiveX, COM+, DCOM, the Windows shell, DirectX, UMDF and Windows Runtime. It is used to enable inter-process communication object creation in a large range of programming languages. com /en-us /windows /win32 /com /the-component-object-modelĬomponent Object Model ( COM) is a binary-interface standard for software components introduced by Microsoft in 1993. built upon COM: OLE, OLE Automation, Browser Helper Object, ActiveX, COM+, DCOM, Windows shell, DirectX, UMDF, Windows Runtimeĭocs.