Intermediate to advanced C++ and Visual Basic developers will benefit significantly from this book, particularly if they understand COM superficially, but now need a complete understanding of both COM and COM+. Specifically, the book will do the following:

• Provide a thorough grounding in core COM concepts and then demonstrate how these concepts are used to facilitate each COM+ service.

• Explain each COM+ service conceptually and then go into detail using what-if scenarios and extensive code examples.

• Point out "gotchas", where the development reality differs from intuition and documentation, providing workarounds where necessary.

• Fill in many missing details not found in supporting documentation, other books, and articles.

• Fill in many details about supporting technologies not usually discussed in detail—Microsoft's Distributed Transaction Coordinator (DTC), Resource Dispensers, and so on.

• Demonstrate the "how-to" of COM+ with extensive supporting sample code in both VB and C++, and at times, J++.

• Provide extensive source code demonstrating concepts discussed in the book and advanced techniques that, though not specific to COM+, are generally useful.

Development managers might also find the conceptual explanations in this book helpful in understanding the capabilities of COM+. However, the reader should be comfortable programming in Visual Basic, C++, or both.