Win32 System Services: The Heart of Windows® 98 and Windows® 2000

10.4. Connection Management

Network connections are inherently more fragile than connections inside a machine. Components in a distributed application need to be notified if a client is not active anymore, especially in the case of a network or hardware failure.

DCOM manages connections to components that are dedicated to a single client, as well as to components that are shared by multiple clients, by maintaining a reference count on each component. When a client establishes a connection to a component, DCOM increments the component's reference count. When the client releases its connection, DCOM decrements the component's reference count. If the count reaches zero, the component can free itself. DCOM uses an efficient pinging protocol to detect ...