The hint is in the name: "Distributed COM" i.e. DCOM :)
> Unlike DCOM, COM is extremely popular and widely used.
My understanding was that DCOM is nothing but data marshaling and registring GUIDs with Windows registry so that the COM object can be created locally/remotely. If COM is widely in use, then DCOM should be as well. The whole gaming(DirectX) and finance(OLE) industry is built on the DCOM/COM infrastructure :)
> If COM is widely in use, then DCOM should be as well
I'm not sure what you mean. If you don't actually activate an object on another machine, you're not using DCOM. You're just using regular COM. The distinction is pretty clear; if you need the "Remote Activation" permission on a target machine, then you're using DCOM. Nobody is, for instance, instantiating DirectX objects over the network. It may help to know that COM predates DCOM by several years; they are not the same thing. DCOM adds additional infrastructure to allow it to happen over a network.
The distinction here is relevant because DCOM, not just local COM, is the competitor to CORBA. The "distributed" part is the part that didn't work out and that, it turns out, not very many people want.
The hint is in the name: "Distributed COM" i.e. DCOM :)
> Unlike DCOM, COM is extremely popular and widely used.
My understanding was that DCOM is nothing but data marshaling and registring GUIDs with Windows registry so that the COM object can be created locally/remotely. If COM is widely in use, then DCOM should be as well. The whole gaming(DirectX) and finance(OLE) industry is built on the DCOM/COM infrastructure :)