I started my COM+ learning experience with Peishu Li's "Visual Basic and COM+ Programming tier. This book is very well written. Developers with a background in MTS may want to skip the "by Example" book but you definitely want to read this book. Scot Hillier understands COM+ (and MTS for that matter) and his style of writing is pleasant to read.

If you are like me; fed up with shoebox size books that are written by 20 people writing half a chapter each with no continuity and a lot of unnecessary information, you are looking at the right book.

Like many people I know, I made the transition from COM to COM+ without reading anything and just porting my COM components to COM+. Recently when I had some time at hand, I picked up this book and read it in two days (yeah, try doing that with those 1200 pages books). It's an excellent book but here is a word of caution for you; it's not a beginner's book to COM+. If you have been working with COM (or at least know how to make a DLL and use it in VB), you are the audience of this book. If you don't know MTS, don't be discouraged, you don't need to know it in order to read this book but you do need to know ADO to understand some of the key concepts of this book.

The only downside of the book is that the author, while discussing practical application of concepts, keeps referring to the code on accompanying CD. Well, it would have been better if the code were also printed in the book (I know it would have become a little more voluminous but not a shoebox). I found it sort of distracting. As for me, the CD is still sealed in the package it came in and I guessed the code all the way and the guesses worked 9 out of 10 times. It doesn't mean that I am a very good developer; it's only that the author has kept the examples simple.

All in all, a true value for your money.

I read this book cover-to-cover and learned a tremendous amount about programming middleware. This one takes you right into the code with numerous "quick checks" (small projects that illustrate a point) and larger exercises to show exactly how to port objects into the COM+ runtime environment. The book centers on a "DNA Payload" project, which contains the author's preferred method of data transport across and within tiers. Because he assumes that you know ADO, basic XML, stored procedures, and general n-tier architecture, Hillier gets into the good stuff fast which I liked.