Windows 10: COM Server and OLE Document support for the Desktop Bridge

Brink · Apr 12, 2017

The Windows 10 Creators Update adds out-of-process (OOP) COM and OLE support for apps on the Desktop Bridge – a.k.a Packaged COM. Historically, Win32 apps would create COM extensions that other applications could use. For example, Microsoft Excel exposes its Excel.Application object so third-party applications can automate operations in Excel, leveraging its rich object model. But in the initial release of the Desktop Bridge with the Windows 10 Anniversary Update, an application cannot expose its COM extension points, as all registry entries are in its private hive and not exposed publicly to the system. Packaged COM provides a mechanism for COM and OLE entries to be declared in the manifest so they can be used by external applications. The underlying system handles the activation of the objects so they can be consumed by COM clients – all while still delivering on the Universal Windows Platform (UWP) promise of having a no-impact install and uninstall behavior.

How it works

Packaged COM entries are read from the manifest and stored in a new catalog that the UWP deployment system manages. This solves one of the main problems in COM in which any application or installer can write to the registry and corrupt the system, e.g. overwriting existing COM registrations or leaving behind registry entries upon uninstall.

At run-time when a COM call is made, i.e. calling CLSIDFromProgID() or CoCreateInstance(), the system first looks in the Packaged COM catalog and, if not found, falls back to the system registry. The COM server is then activated and runs OOP from the client application.

When to use Packaged COM

Packaged COM is very useful for apps that expose third-party extension points, but not all applications need it. If your application uses COM only for its own personal use, then you can rely on COM entries in the application’s private hive (Registry.dat) to support your app. All binaries in the same package have access to that registry, but any other apps on the system cannot see into your app’s private hive. Packaged COM allows you explicit control over which servers can be made public and used by third-parties.

Limitations

As the Packaged COM entries are stored in a separate catalog, applications that directly read the registry (e.g. calling RegOpenKeyEx() or RegEnumKeyEx()) will not see any entries and will fail. In these scenarios, applications providing extensions will need to work with their partners to go through COM API calls or provide another app-to-app communication mechanism.

Support is scoped to OOP servers, allowing two key requirements. First, OOP server supports means the Desktop Bridge can maintain its promise of serviceability. By running extensions OOP, the update manager can shut down the COM server and update all binaries because there are no dlls in use loaded by other processes. Second, OOP allows for a more robust extension mechanism. If an in-process COM server is hung, it will also hang the app; for OOP, the host app will still function and can decide how to handle the misbehaving OOP server.

We do not support every COM and OLE registration entry, for the full list of what we support please refer to the element hierarchy in the Windows 10 app package manifest on MSDN: https://docs.microsoft.com/uwp/schem.../root-elements
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dtscaps---01 · Apr 12, 2017

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funplay321 · Apr 12, 2017

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Windows 10: COM Server and OLE Document support for the Desktop Bridge

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