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OLE Controls Inside Out by Adam Denning Recommended

ISBN: 0 55615 824 6       Publisher: Microsoft Press       Pages: 558pp+CD       Price: £37-49

Categories:   MS Windows     CORBA and COM

Reviewed by Eddie Boyle in C Vu 9-2 (Jan 1997)

OLE Controls (OCXs) are the generic equivalent of VBXs. They provide the basic mechanism for the utopia of ComponentWare. The idea is that you never reinvent the wheel, you simply buy an OCX component.

The author is aware of the many different audiences reading his book. To cater for this he covers basic topics such as MFC, COM and OLE in brief summaries. However, they do contain enough detail so that the core of the book (i.e. OLE Controls) is placed in its proper context. These summary chapters are clearly highlighted so that readers well versed in these areas can safely skip over them.

The author's approach is to begin with the skeleton OCX that the AppWizard produces by default. He then proceeds to explain the various aspects of this simple OCX as he adds more and more functionality to it. At the end of this process a 'Consolidation' chapter uses the resulting OCX to bring together all of the topics learnt so far. This demonstrates how the various aspects of the OCX work in relation to each other. Further OCXs are then created as more advanced capabilities are described.

Also covered in depth are; the issues of converting existing VBXs into OCXs; the problems of cross-platform development for 16 and 32 bit environments; official Microsoft guidelines for OCX design and content. I found this particular Microsoft Press offering to be easier to read than others in the same series and I feel that this was due to the fact that Adam Denning is British.