Clients, Servers, and Object Implementors

The interaction between objects and the users of those objects in COM is based on a client/server model. This chapter has already been using the term client to refer to some piece of code that is using the services of an object. Because an object supplies services, the implementor of that object is usually called the server, the one who serves those capabilities. A client/server architecture in any computing environment leads to greater robustness: if a server process crashes or is otherwise disconnected from a client, the client can handle that problem gracefully and even restart the server if necessary. As robustness is a primary goal in COM, then a client/server model naturally fits.

However, there is more to COM than just clients and servers. There are also object implementors, or some program structure that implements an object of some kind with one or more interfaces on that object. Sometimes a client wishes to provide a mechanism for an object to call back to the client when specific events occur. In such cases, COM specifies that the client itself implements an object and hands that object's first interface pointer to the other object outside the client. In that sense, both sides are clients, both sides are servers in some way. Since this can lead to confusion, the term server is applied in a much more specific fashion leading to the following definitions that apply in all of COM:

Object A unit of functionality that implements one or more interfaces to expose that functionality. For convenience, the word is used both to refer to an object class as well as an individual instantiation of a class. Note that an object class does not need a class identifier in the COM sense such that other applications can instantiate objects of that class—the class used to implement the object internally has no bearing on the externally visible COM class identifier.
Object Implementor Any piece of code, such as an application, that has implemented an object with any interfaces for any reason. The object is simply a means to expose functions outside the particular application such that outside agents can call those functions. Use of "object" by itself implies an object found in some "object implementor" unless stated otherwise.
Client There are two definitions of this word. The general definition is any piece of code that is using the services of some object, wherever that object might be implemented. A client of this sort is also called an object user. The second definition is the active agent (an application) that drives the flow of operation between itself an other objects and uses specific COM implementation locator services to instantiate or create objects through servers of various object classes.
Server A piece of code that structures an object class in a specific fashion and assigns that class a COM class identifier. This enables a client to pass the class identifier to COM and ask for an object of that class. COM is able to load and run the server code, ask the sever to create an object of the class, and connect that new object to the client. A server is specifically the necessary structure around an object that serves the object to the rest of the system and associates the class identifier: a server is not the object itself. The word server is used in discussions to emphasize the serving agent more than the object. The phrase server object is used specifically to identify an object that is implemented in a server when the context is appropriate.

Putting all of these pieces together, imagine a client application that initially uses COM services to create an object of a particular class. COM will run the server associated with that class and have it create an object, returning an interface pointer to the client. With that interface pointer the client can query for any other interface on the object. If a client wants to be notified of events that happen in the object in the server, such as a data change, the client itself will implement an "event sink" object and pass the interface pointer to that sink to the server's object through an interface function call. The server holds onto that interface pointer and thus itself becomes a client of the sink object. When the server object detects an appropriate event, it calls the sink object's interface function for that even. The overall configuration created in this scenario is much like that shown earlier in Figure 1-5. There are two primary modules of code (the original client and the server) who both implement objects and who both act in some aspects as clients to establish the configuration.

When both sides in a configuration implement objects then the definition of client is usually the second one meaning the active agent who drives the flow of operation between all objects, even when there is more than one piece of code that is acting like a client of the first definition. This specification endeavors to provide enough context to make it clear what code is responsible for what services and operations.