Noob ? about COM servers

[bernard]

Hi Hutch!  It's been a while since I was actively programming.  I'm on to a new challenge now and am looking to get my bearings before heading down a new path.  This topic is not specific to Assembly, but I am hoping there are some experienced programmers here who might be able to help me out with a general question.

Consider an application like Microsoft Word. It is an application that exposes a COM interface.  Does MS Word need to use the COM routines that it exposes for 3rd party developers for internal use (to maintain data integrity) or can it utilize more optimized native code internally and just offer the slower (more overhead) COM interface code for 3rd party integration?  If the latter, are there any special considerations that must be accounted for to work in conjunction with possible COM clients?

[sluggy]

Does MS Word need to use the COM routines that it exposes for 3rd party developers for internal use

No it doesn't *need* them, although it is best to point out that the COM interfaces are actually for *any* piece of software that wants to use it as a client, not just third party stuff. It has been well known in the past that MS maintained APIs into its Office products, but these APIs were undocumented and were for internal use only, which is one reason why nobody was able to achieve the level of integration between the apps that MS did.
The only thing i would advise is that you use early binding to help catch errors, only use late binding where you absolutely have to (with late binding you are more prone to run time errors).