OLE Resource Center

This is a list of various resources that are of use to developers working in OLE and COM. This list is maintained by Don Box, and any opinions listed below are his own and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone else in the known universe.

Books

1) The Component Object Model Specification - Draft
Easily the best written document on COM available in any form. The current draft is available via ftp, and answers many unanswered questions from other sources. It also gives insights into where Network OLE is going.
Rating: 5

2) OLE Programmer's Reference 2nd Edition (2 vols) - Draft
A terse treatment of COM and several OLE technologies. Volume 1 covers COM and OLE Documents, Volume 2 covers Type Libraries and Dispatch interfaces. The second editions are currently only available via ftp, but are considerably better written and more accurate than the 1st editions.
Rating: 5

3) Inside OLE, 2nd Edition
Kraig Brockshmidt, Microsoft Press
Do not buy the first edition of this book. Do buy the second edition. The second edition gives a very throrough tour of most of OLE, including the more interesting aspects of OLE controls. The book is long (1100+ pages), but KB covers a lot of ground. Thankfully, the second edition contains almost no code, which was a severe problem in his first edition.
Rating: 4.5

4) Visual C++ Manuals Vol 6: OLE Controls
Microsoft Press
This is the closest we get to documentation for Controls. While somewhat terse and mostly a MFC-CDK manual with tutorial, this is where one should start. It is unfortunate that the MFC implementation of Compound Documents and Automation don't get as extensive a treatment.
Rating: 4

5) Using OLE 2.x in Application Development
John Toohey, Que
1/3 OLE SDK, 2/3 OLE in MFC. Currently the best book on OLE in MFC.
Rating: 4

6) OLE2.0 and DDE Distilled
Al Williams, Addison Wesley
This book is kind of useless, but it was a great antidote to Inside OLE2 in its day. IOLE2 was roughly 1000 pages, and Al Williams covers the same topic in a 300 page book (of which, 100 pages is dedicated to DDE, an completely unrelated topic). To this end, it was refreshing to see a TERSE (albiet extremely incomplete) treatment of a complex topic.
Rating: 2

7) Teach Yourself OLE2 in 21 Days
Sams
OLE at the SDK level.
Rating: 3

8) Mastering OLE
Brian Waters, Sybex
Brockscmidt-lite. This one is probably too terse to learn to program from, but is a reasonable tutorial for those that wish to understand OLE Documents.
Rating: 3.5

8) Heavy Metal OLE
Steve Holzner
Very glitzy cover. Pedestrian screen dumps and wizard generated code. Little substance. Gets points for being early to market though ;-)
Rating: 1

9) OLE Wizardry
Murray & Pappas, Osborne
Conservative looking cover. 75 pages on elementary OO in C++. 75 pages on straight (non-OLE) MFC. 100 pages of screen dumps and Wizard code. Little substance. Was too late to market to beat Holzner as the definitive Fluff book, hence the low rating.
Rating: 0

10) Building OCXs
Toohey et al, Que
Rarely does a book that is authored by two people have authorship credits on each chapter. After reading this book, it appears that neither author wanted to claim credit for the book. Toohey wrote two chapters (one of which is similar to a chapter in his earlier book), and the 2nd author wrote the rest of the book. There is no cohesion, and there is considerable overlap between many chapters (some are logically identical). It looks as if this book had no editor or reviewers. Besides being a really horrible book, there is virtually no information in this book that is not covered BETTER in VC++ Vol 6 mentioned above.
Rating: -1

Periodicals

Microsoft Systems Journal
Miller Freeman
MSJ runs a feature article related to OLE at least once every three months. They also run an OLE Q&A column written by Don Box of DevelopMentor in every other issue. Click here to submit a question and perhaps see your name in lights (or at least print).

The C++ Report
SIGS Publications
Begining in September 1995, C++ Report will be running ComponentCraft, a column dedicated to programming the Component Object Model in C++.

Windows Tech Journal
Oakley Publications
WTJ runs an OLE-related piece in almost every issue. Most of the pieces have been oriented towards using OLE from MFC.

VC++ Professional
Oakley Publications
VC++ Pro occasionally runs MFC/OLE related pieces.