Richard Grimes is back with another book to extend Wrox' well received Professional series. As the title suggests this book is all about Visual C++6&the Microsoft Transaction Server. But do not make the mistake of assuming that this is a 'how to' book - the blurb on the back states: 'This book is aimed at the experienced C++ programmer who wishes to find out more about the sparsely-documented creature that is MTS.' As you can imagine, Grimes makes good on the promise and the whole book is his personal voyage into the guts of MTS. Each chapter takes a major chunk of the MTS mystique, pulls it apart and shows you how you could implement the same.

At this point, I have to ask what is the point of this book? One would assume that a book on VC++ and MTS might show you how to program effectively using C++ and MTS, but this book concentrates on showing you how MTS does what it does. If you want to learn how to adapt your COM classes to use MTS, do not bother with this book. If you want to learn how to write a competing product to MTS, then this is the book you need.