Interfacing Ada 95 to Microsoft COM and DCOM Technologies David Botton Interactive Intelligence, Inc. Ada Core Technologies, Inc. 600 West Hillsboro Blvd., Suit 325 73 Fifth Avenue, 11B Deerfield Beach, Florida 33441 New York, New York 10003 (954) 698-0030x187
[email protected] 1. ABSTRACT Microsoft has been based on COM and DCOM. COM, the Component Object Model, and Using COM objects requires access by the language or tool to the Win32 API and the ability to interface to C. DCOM, Distributed COM, were introduced as Additionally, the ability to create interfaces conforming to the underlying technologies of Microsoft’s the COM binary standard is needed. Ada provides the second version of OLE, but have since proven ability to interface to C and many Ada compilers that their utility as powerful model for distributed generate code for Windows NT provide the capability of systems. This paper intends to introduce COM creating binaries that comply with the COM standard. and DCOM to the Ada community and This paper demonstrates the fundamentals of interfacing demonstrate how to create and use objects that Ada to Microsoft’s COM and Distributed COM technologies. Three applications are constructed, a COM conform to these models. client, a single apartment in-process COM object with a 1.1 Keywords single interface, and an application to register a COM Component Object Model, COM, Distributed COM, object on a remote machine for Distributed use. Creating Components, ActiveX, OLE more robust COM objects that build on these applications will require, as a base, knowledge of Microsoft’s Interface 2. INTRODUCTION Definition Language (IDL) and how to use the extended Microsoft introduced Object Linking and Embedding 2 COM types VARIANT and BSTR from the Win32 API.