The book starts out with a detailed overview of all thing COM (COM, DCOM, OLE and ActiveX) and what is and isn't in Visual C++.

Then it goes on to write some COM code without the use of MFC and then builds on the same set of examples by re-writing them using ATL and C++ templates.

After a good grounding in COM it introduces the additional factors needing to be considered when moving the COM server onto another machine. Examples include NT Security, installation of your COM object and threading models.

The book is very well laid out and shows snippets of examples, enough to get you to understand the concept that they are trying to get over, with full code included on a CD in the back of the book.

This book certainly helped me to get into COM/DCOM and write a system from scratch.

I now use it again as my new place of work also uses COM/DCOM.Software Development