OLE / COM and COM+

[This is preliminary documentation and subject to change.]

These are guidelines that relate to providing consistent, up-to-date support for OLE, COM, DCOM, and the new COM+ technology on Microsoft® Windows®:

OLE / COM

• Provide an OLE container or object server. (Required)
• Allow users to drag objects to any container. (Required)
• Implement IDropTarget and/or IDropSource interfaces in containers . (Required)
• Test object servers for basic OLE functionality. (Required)
• Test containers for basic OLE container functionality. (Required)
• Place an Object command on a container's Insert menu. (Required)
• Make object servers ActiveX document servers. (Recommended)
• Make containers ActiveX document containers. (Recommended)
• Close object servers automatically after object delivery. (Recommended)
• Support ActiveX Accessibility in containers. (Recommended)
• Support modifier keys in containers. (Recommended)
• Provide linking and in-place activation in containers. (Recommended)
• Support the structured storage compound file format in containers. (Recommended)
• Use component categories. (Best Practice)
• Use the system property set implementation. (Best Practice)
• Provide a type library for public automation interfaces. (Best Practice)

COM+

• Support Microsoft Transaction Server. (Best Practice)
• Expose all new object servers as COM+ objects. (Best Practice)
• Support the COM+ versioning and configuration model. (Best Practice)
• Use COM+ calling conventions. (Best Practice)
• Support COM+ events rather than custom event programming. (Best Practice)
• Expose standard COM+ interfaces. (Best Practice)
• Take advantage of COM+ run-time interfaces. (Best Practice)
• Take advantage of COM+ run-time DLL functions. (Best Practice)
• Do not write InprocServer32 entries for components directly to HKCR. (Best Practice)
• Support COM+ declarative attributes. (Best Practice)
• Use COM+ automatic transaction support, persistence, and data binding as necessary. (Best Practice)
• Implement system monitoring or call monitoring and management using interception. (Best Practice)
• Use the COM+ persistent event binding system. (Best Practice)
• Use the COM+ importer, emitter, portable executable format, and run-time system. (Best Practice)