SPAM Talk: Component Technology: What Microsoft is doing and how components relate to functional programming.

Component Technology: What Microsoft is doing and how components relate to functional programming.

by John Peterson

Component-based programming is a methodology which decomposes a program into a set of changable components which interact via interfaces. This programming style addressed a number of software engineering issues:

Extensibility
Upgrading
Scripting
Distributed computing
Interoperation
Resource management

Microsoft now uses components in all of its applications. A number of related technologies are involved, including COM, DCOM, ActiveX, and OLE.

This talk will be in two parts: first, an overview of Microsoft's approach to components and some practical examples of how components are used. Second, I'll talk about how this relates to functional programming, a view which greatly simplifies component based programming.