COM & .NET Component Services

Chapter 7. COM+ Security

Perhaps nothing epitomizes the differences between developing a distributed enterprise-wide system using COM+ and developing one using DCOM more than the COM+ security service. DCOM security is notorious for being complex and hard to learn. Even though DCOM uses a simple and elegant security programming and configuration model, the sheer volume of technical details and the inherent difficulty of distributed systems security puts DCOM security outside the reach of many developers.

COM+ makes using security enjoyable by providing an easy-to-use administrative security infrastructure. COM+ security is based on an intuitive new security concept called role-based security. Role-based security greatly simplifies the management and configuration of your application’s security. Of all component services provided by COM+, security is my favorite.

COM+ security makes it possible for you to leave all security-related functionality outside the scope of your components and configure security administratively. Roles are used for access control, and declarative attributes are used for the remaining security settings. If the administrative configurations are too coarse for your particular needs and you still want to have programmatic control over security, COM+ provides an easy-to-use programmatic way to fine-tune security. In fact, COM+ security solves classic distributed computing problems that are difficult and would require much work to solve on your own. Even with ...