Delphi and COM:

Introduction to creating  automation servers

• What are automation objects ?
• What's in a name ?. COM, ActiveX, (Ole-)automation, how do all these terms fit together ?
• "Hello automation object" Add an automation object to an existing application. Create methods and properties which will be used by a piece of VBscript.
• Creating an automation DLL Convert the server to an in-process DLL.

Working with automation objects

• Using automation objects Programming techniques in automation clients.
• Objects and interfaces. What's the difference ? A Delphi point of view.
• Error handling. On calling conventions, function results and exception handling.

Expanding the possibilties

• Advanced properties. Create an indexed property or a property that is an interfaces itself. Build an object tree using lightweight automation objects.
• Automation collections. Creating targets for for each.
• Automation arrays. Anything can be stored in a variant array.
• Class factories. Automation objects are created by a factory. Influence the registration and creation of objects. Make your objects licensed.

Events

• Events. Fire events in your automation server, react on the events in a VBA client.
• Advanced events. Pass information in the event. Support multiple clients and sinks. A C# client app works with your automation object.
• The tAuto(Intf)ObjectWithEvents class. These tAutoObject and tAutoIntfObject descendents supports multiple event sinks.

Sharing automation objects

• Active objects. Sharing an automation object amongst multiple clients.

.NET

• Comparing features of C#/Delphi and .NET/VCL How does your Delphi knowledge fit in .NET?
• Using automation in C#  Using connectable automation  objects (built in Delphi) in C#.
• Data in .NET. On the similarities and dissimilarities between the Delphi and .NET data classes.

A large part of the material covered is demonstrated in the demo application.

Acknowledgments, links and further reading.