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Interface Design Recommendations

To help you define custom interfaces, this section provides several guidelines for improved designs. Although no design guidelines can be considered recipes for creating a useful interface specification, we hope that these suggestions will provide you with ideas. If you have found techniques of your own that have proved successful, let us know; perhaps we will be able to include them in a future edition of this book.

First, you should study the standard interfaces that are defined by Microsoft as part of COM+ and its fundamental services, such as structured storage, monikers, connection points, type libraries, automation, and apartments. While not always perfect, Microsoft's designs reflect the goals and objectives of COM+ itself. This knowledge will be invaluable when you define a set of custom interfaces. In addition to this general recommendation, we offer the following more specific guidelines: