Building Distributed Applications with COM+ Services and Microsoft Visual C++
(Microsoft Training Course: 2099) - 5 days - £2640 exc VAT

THIS COURSE HAS NOW RETIRED. PLEASE SEE THE SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION FOR DETAILS OF ALTERNATIVE COURSES.
This course provides developers with a solid grounding in COM+ programming techniques and best practices. It is intended for C++ developers with COM and development experience, who are responsible for building high performance, scalable, and secure distributed applications on the Microsoft Windows 2000 platform.

1. Introducing COM+
2. Administering and Debugging COM+ Applications
3. COM+ Object Management
4. COM+ Transactions and State Management
5. The Compensating Resource Manager
6. COM+ Queued Components
7. COM+ Loosely Coupled Events
8. Securing COM+ Applications
9. COM+ Concurrency Management

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Supplementary Information This course has now retired and is no longer available. We suggest you look at Course 2548: Core Distributed Application Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and 2549: Advanced Distributed Application Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.

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Module 1: Introducing COM+

• COM+ Overview
• An Overview of the Web-Based Retail Application

Skills

• Listing the advantages of a three-tier approach to distributed systems development.
  
• Listing the services provided by COM+.
  
• Listing the supporting services relied upon by COM+.
  
• Defining the relationship between COM+ applications, components, and classes.
  

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Module 2: Administering and Debugging COM+ Applications

• Using the Component Services Tool
• Programmatic Administration
• Debugging COM+ Applications
• Handling Errors in COM+ Applications
• Deploying COM+ Applications

Skills

• Creating and configuring a COM+ application by using the Component Services administration tool.
  
• Making programmatic changes to the COM+ catalog by using the COM+ administration objects.
  
• Debugging a COM+ application.
  
• Handling errors in COM+ applications.
  
• Deploying a COM+ application.
  

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Module 3: COM+ Object Management

• Contexts and Interception
• Object Activation and Deactivation
• Object Construction Strings
• Object Pooling

Skills

• Using object constructor strings.
  
• Implementing IObjectControl to receive object activation and deactivation notifications.
  
• Configuring Just-in-Time (JIT) activation and object pooling.
  

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Module 4: COM+ Transactions and State Management

• Introduction to Distributed Transactions
• COM+ Transactions
• Programming COM+ Transactions
• State Management and the Shared Property Manager

Skills

• Configuring a component's transactional attribute by using Component Services.
  
• Monitoring transaction activity.
  
• Managing transactions programmatically by using the IObjectContext and IContextState interfaces.
  
• Developing transactional COM+ components and exploiting object pooling for enhanced performance.
  
• Using the Shared Property Manager (SPM) to manage shared-transient state.
  

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Module 5: The Compensating Resource Manager

• The Compensating Resource Manager (CRM)
• Developing CRM components

Skills

• Configuring COM+ applications for CRM support.
  
• Developing a CRM worker component.
  
• Developing a CRM compensator component.
  
• Monitoring CRMs as they participate in a transaction.
  

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Module 6: COM+ Queued Components

• Introduction to Queuing
• Developing Queued Components
• Queued Components and Transactions

Skills

• Installing and configuring a queued component in a COM+ application.
  
• Creating an instance of a queued component by using the queue and new monikers.
  

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Module 7: COM+ Loosely Coupled Events

• Event Handling Models
• Publisher and Subscriber Architecture
• Working With Events
• Event Filtering
• Combining Queued Components with Events
• Monitoring COM+ Applications

Skills

• Creating and registering an event class.
  
• Implementing and registering a subscriber component.
  
• Developing an event publisher.
  
• Implementing subscriber filtering.
  
• Implementing publisher filtering.
  
• Publishing events asynchronously.
  
• Delivering events asynchronously.
  
• Monitoring a COM+ application by subscribing to COM+ system events.
  

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Module 8: Securing COM+ Applications

• COM+ Role-Based Security
• Middle-Tier Access Control
• IIS as a COM+ Client

Skills

• Using roles to establish an authorization policy for a COM+ application.
  
• Implementing programmatic security by using security call context information.
  
• Accessing upstream client security details.
  

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Module 9: COM+ Concurrency Management

• Apartments pre-Windows 2000
• Windows 2000 Apartments and Contexts
• Synchronization in COM+

Skills

• Configuring components to use COM+ synchronization.
  
• Using system application programming interfaces (APIs) to marshal interface pointers across context boundaries.
  
• Using the Free Threaded Marshaler (FTM) appropriately.
  
• Listing the advantages of the Thread Neutral Apartment (TNA).
  

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Before attending this course, the student must have the following pre-requisites:

• A solid understanding of COM fundamentals with at least six months of hands-on working experience developing components by using C++ and ATL.
• Be Interface Definition Language (IDL) literate.
• Understand the three-tier distributed application design model.

At the end of the course, students will be able to list the services that are provided by COM+; create, administer, and deploy a COM+ application by using the Component Services tool and configuration interfaces; describe the COM+ internal system architecture; develop distributed transactional COM+ components; use the Compensating Resource Manager (CRM) to encompass a non-transactional resource; develop systems that take advantage of loosely coupled asynchronous communications by using COM+ Queued Components; exploit the COM+ loosely coupled event system for information dissemination in a distributed environment; apply declarative and programmatic security techniques to secure a COM+ application; describe how COM+ manages concurrency, and list the benefits of the neutral-threading model.

This course has now retired and is no longer available. We suggest you look at Course 2548: Core Distributed Application Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 and 2549: Advanced Distributed Application Development with Microsoft Visual Studio 2005.