updated: February 14, 2011
Component Object Modeling (COM) is Microsoft's technology that allows you to build independent active software components that interact and communicate with each other and a bigger application. A COM object does something that can be used and reused by applications that want to focus on the bigger picture.
Creating COM ObjectsMicrosoft Visual Studio, C++ compiler and libraries allow a programmer to create a basic COM object using a wizard. A COM object can interact with a database.The COM InterfaceA COM object has an interface, a set of functions, that is generic enough to be used by multiple calling programs or other COM objects. The application accesses features of a COM object via this interface. The COM technology provides a standard way of function calling across these interfaces.Multi-platform InteroperabilityA COM object is in its binary form and can be developed by a third party vendor. Therefore, usability and interactability of various such binary objects depends heavily on the COM technology as long as the underlying operating system and hardware remain unchanged. mkv to avi converter