CSE775 - Distributed Objects

Lecture #16 - Out-of-Proc Components and Activation

Web Resources:

Office Hours:Instructor & TAs

Content:

1. Syllabus
   Describes topics to be covered, reading material for you to digest before coming to class, and due dates for the assigned projects.
2. Project #1, Project #2, Final Projects
3. Material Presented Earlier - may be useful for Project #2:
   
   Apartments and Threading Presentation
   Introduces the notion of apartments and their use to manage COM components that many not share the same thread model with their clients.

   Threading Rules
   

   Component Calls Component
   This document discusses briefly building a workspace with a client that calls a component that, in turn, calls another component. The outer component marshals the an interface pointer for the inner component back to the client.
   ComponentCallsComponent Project
   This project provides all the code used to generate screen shots for the presentation in the previous item. The code provides brief, but useful, examples of the CComQIPtr and CComBSTR classes. I believe this is the best way to build a client for components built with ATL.

   Marshaling Interface Pointers between Client Threads
   You can't pass interface pointers between apartments, without marshaling. To do so breaks the COM threading model. This project shows you how to do that.

4. Out-of-Process Components:
   
   OutProc Components Presentation
   Discusses the structure and activation of Out-of-Process components.

   Out-of-Proc class diagram, Out-of-Proc event trace,
   Out-of-ProcST structure chart, Out-of-ProcMT structure chart

   Interactive OutProc Demo
   We will build this simple project interactively in class.

   OutProcST Project - SingleThreaded Server
   Demonstrates how Out-of-Process Single-Threaded Server is structured. Uses Windows message loop.

   OutProcMT Project - MultiThreaded Server
   Demonstrates how Out-of-Process Multi-Threaded Server is structured. Uses Win32 events.

   ATL_OutProcST
   Demonstrates how to build a simple ATL Out-of-Proc component and C# client