reasons for choosing com

Question

i was wondering why one would choose Com as his software development "technology"

my first though is machine/programming _language independence

what's yours ?

Answer 1

COM is the de facto standard for automation and IPC on windows (though .Net has begun to shift the focus), thus there are areas you simply don't have (or had) a choice:

• Shell extensions
• ActiveX builds on COM
• Internet Explorer extensions
• extending MS Office applications
• Scriptability for JScript, VBScript, ... with one binary

Before the event of .Net nearly all automation of MS applications was through COM and quite some firms got on that train as well.

Also DCOM is, if you're willing to limit yourself to windows, a reliable and proven technology for distributed components.