At the base level, COM is simply a set of rules that define how a COM-aware application and a COM component can communicate with one another. One of the fundamental concepts of COM programming is that the actual programming language(s) used to create the application and/or the component are completely unimportant to each other. COM just defines the underlying mechanism for the two to work together.
To make it even easier for the programmer, PowerBASIC encapsulates most all of the low-level details of the actual COM communication process, providing a straightforward way to load and communicate with a COM component using BASIC syntax.
However, in order to fully exploit a COM component, some understanding of the concepts and terminology of COM is essential, and we'll discuss these in turn.
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