Microsoft Corp’s DCOM Distributed Component Object Model technology for Windows 95 was released to developers last week as a free download. Developers will need Windows NT to write DCOM applications for Windows 95, but once the applications are finished, the code can be redistributed. However, Microsoft hasn’t set out the terms for redistribution yet. The Windows 95 release of DCOM requires NT 4.0 with the Service Pack 2 Software Developer Kit Update, plus either the Win32 developers kit for NT 4.0 or the most recent update to Visual C++ 4.2b. Applications that use DCOM can be written in VC++, Visual Basic, Visual J++, Microsoft Word or Excel. DCOM, of course, started life as Network OLE, and is Microsoft’s method of enabling one computer to run programs residing on some other machine on a network or on the Internet.
