This chapter presented the concept of a COM class. COM classes are named concrete data types that export one or more interfaces and are the primary abstraction used in object activation in COM. COM supports three activation primitives. CoGetClassObject binds a reference to a class object, which is a class-wide singleton that represents the instance-independent functionality of a class. CoCreateInstanceEx binds a reference to a new class instance, and CoGetInstanceFromFile binds a reference to a persistent instance in a file. Monikers are used as a uniform abstraction for exposing binding and activation policies to clients, with MkParseDisplayName acting as the entry point into the namespace of COM.