ATL Internals

Book excerpt: The Classic Guide to ATL–Now Updated for ATL 8 and Visual Studio 2005 Four leading Windows programming experts systematically reveal ATL’s inner workings, explaining not just how ATL works, but why it works the way it does. Client-side developers will master ATL’s resources for windowing, COM control, MFC integration, web service proxy generation, and more. Server-side programmers will discover ATL’s full COM server and object services, and its extensive support for high-throughput, high-concurrency web applications, and services. Every Windows developer will learn powerful ways to increase flexibility, reduce overhead, and maximize transparency and control. • Discover ATL’s internals through diagrams, example code, and internal ATL implementation code • Walk through wizards that simplify ATL usage in common applications • Master string handling in C++, COM, and ATL • Leverage ATL smart types, including CComPtr, CComQIPtr, CComBSTR, and CComVariant • Understand and choose the right options for implementing IUnknown • Create glue code that exposes COM objects from COM servers • Use canned interface implementations to support object persistence, COM collections, enumerators, and connection points • Build standalone applications and UI components with ATL window classes and controls • Use ATL Server to develop web applications that run on Microsoft IIS