An important thing to keep in mind when working with COM objects in ColdFusion is that the components you use with ColdFusion are non-visual - that is, they don't have a graphical interface. They are server-side components that encapsulate business logic you can invoke in your ColdFusion applications. If you were to invoke an object with a graphical interface in your ColdFusion application, a window for the component might appear on the web server desktop, not the user's desktop. And each time the component was invoked, another window would open until server resources were exhausted.
COM objects used by ColdFusion are dynamically linked components. Late binding means that the component is not linked into ColdFusion until it's actually needed. If you want to change a component on a live site, you just have to make sure no one is using it, and it's free to be swapped out with a new version.
COM objects can be transparently relocated on a network. A component on a different machine on a network is treated the same as a component on the local system. Components can also be referenced on machines outside the local network by using DCOM.
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