In the distributed objects world, Microsoft has had to defer to products such as CORBA, Netscape, and Java Beans. With COM and DCOM, Microsoft is poised to make a large dent in the enterprise market. This book teaches software developers the pros and cons of COM and DCOM. It explains how to use COM and DCOM with their existing systems, how they fit into two and three-tier client/server architectures, and new technologies from Microsoft such as Microsoft Transaction Server and Falcon.