The Component Location

Types of Components

Certainly you've heard of ActiveX, DirectX, OCX, COM+, ADO+, ASP, and other Microsoft technologies. These are all technologies that use the COM standard. This section focuses on categorizing COM components according to their properties as well as the context in which they are used. The categorization will define how the EiffelCOM wizard should be used to wrap or create a component. The first criterion that defines the type of component is its location at run time: will the component be loaded in the client process (in-process) or will the component be a remote server for a distributed application (out-of-process)? In the former case, the component is compiled as a Dynamic Link Libraries (DLL) while in the latter case it is a standard executable.

In-process Components

Typical instances of DLL components are found in technologies such as OCX, ActiveX, or ASP. These are small, downloadable binaries that will be loaded and executed in a container. The container acts as a client of the component. The EiffelCOM wizard provides the ability to wrap such a component by providing access to its interface to any Eiffel container. It is also possible to create a new In-process component in Eiffel. One main difference with out-of-process components (other than the nature of the module, DLL versus executable) is the way in-process components are activated. In the case of out-of-process components, the component will specify COM when it is ready to receive calls from client. In the case of an in-process server the call is coming directly from COM: COM first loads the DLL into the client process and then calls the exported function DllGetClassObject to access the component class object. The other three exported functions of an in-process component are DllRegister to register the component in the Windows registry, DllUnregister to unregister the component from the registry and finally DllCanUnloadNow which gets called by COM whenever it tries to unload the component from memory. These four functions must be accessible from outside the DLL for the in-process component to work properly.

Out-of-process Components

These components are standard executable acting as servers that can be accessed locally or over a network. Typically used in a three tier client server architecture, the major difference with in-process servers (other than the module type - executable instead of DLL) is their lifetime. In-process components are typically loaded to achieve a specific task and unloaded just after the task is complete. Out-of-process components are servers, intended to run continuously. The EiffelCOM wizard allows to build clients for such servers in Eiffel. It also provides the ability to create such servers.

See Also:
EiffelCOM library
Introduction
COM Concepts
COM Interfaces
Coclasses
Access Type
Deeper into COM