1.3.1 Activation

Activation is a generic term used to describe the act of creating (or sometimes finding) an existing DCOM object or class factory. Two RPC interfaces in the DCOM Remote Protocol are used to activate objects: IActivation methods and IRemoteSCMActivator methods. At a rudimentary level, activation consists of sending the following to the object activation service on the remote machine:

• A class identifier (CLSID)

• One or more IIDs

• Optionally, an initialization storage reference

The CLSID identifies the class of the object to be created. The IIDs identify the interfaces on the newly created object that the client is asking for and, if specified, the storage reference identifies some persistent store with which the newly created object is to be initialized after creation.

Activation returns object references to the client application. The client application can also send or receive object references as part of ORPC calls.