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Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)

In the 1990's, Microsoft's attempts to create a seamless application interface environment for their applications running under Windows OS were in direct competition with several open standards. They created two proprietary standards, first Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), and then, the more general Component Object Model (COM). Attempts to extend COM from a single processor IPC to a distributed processing protocol would eventually result in an RPC-based protocol called DCOM.

When introduced in 1996, DCOM was intended to directly compete with CORBA's IIOP. It only took a few years for Microsoft to understand that DCOM was never going to viewed as a serious contender to CORBA, and they combined COM and DCOM into COM+. When their .NET Framework was released in 2000, its communication was still based directly on COM+. Its current WCF has moved toward SOAP-based communication, but still shares some aspects with the DCOM protocol.

Since DCOM uses a pure binary messaging format, it is much faster than primarily text-based messaging formats used in protocols like IIOP, or even, newer XML-based protocols that can embed binary data. However, its proprietary nature has greatly limited its general use outside the of Windows OS environment.