Attributes bridges models of C++, COM.(Microsoft Windows NT 5.0)(Product Development)

As part of an ongoing push to make its Component Object Model (COM) more appealing to developers, Microsoft last week previewed a feature in the next release of its Visual C++ tool that aims to simplify creating COM components in that language.

Paul Gross, Microsoft's vice president of developer tools, demonstrated these extensions to the C++ language, called Attributes, at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference in Denver last week.

"There is a mismatch between COM, which is interface-based, and C++," Gross said. "COM corresponds to C++ only in methods. We were making developers write a lot of code to make COM components work together."

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