Distributed COM (DCOM)

If you are a CIO, solution architect, or application developer who wants to create state-of-the-art distributed applications that scale equally well on an intranet, the Internet, or beyond, DCOM can help you. Use DCOM if your applications need to:

• Provide fault-tolerance in the case of hardware failures.
• Be installed in a small workgroup environment as well as a large corporate site.
• Be robust in the presence of network failures.
• Accommodate a wide variety of client machines with different capabilities or in different geographical areas.
• Be more efficient in terms of network load.

DCOM can help you achieve these and other goals in existing applications and in completely new designs.

DCOM extends the Component Object Model (COM) to support communication among objects on different computers—on a LAN, a WAN, or even the Internet. With DCOM, your application can be distributed at locations that make the most sense to your customer and to your application.

Because DCOM is a seamless evolution of COM (the world's leading component technology) you can leverage your existing investment in COM-based applications, components, tools, and knowledge to move into the world of standards-based distributed computing. As you do so, DCOM handles low-level details of network protocols so you can focus on your real business: providing great solutions to your customers.