Binary standard

Com objects is said to follow Binary standard.
could you please tell me what it is meant by Binary standard ?if com object follows binary standard,what are the other standards available.

Com objects is said to follow Binary standard.
could you please tell me what it is meant by Binary standard ?if com object follows binary standard,what are the other standards available.
From the MSDN On-Line reference, "The Component Object Model: A Technical Overview".


Binary Standard
For any given platform (hardware and operating system combination), COM defines a standard way to lay out virtual function tables (vtables) in memory, and a standard way to call functions through the vtables. Thus, any language that can call functions via pointers (C, C++, Small Talk®, Ada, and even Basic) all can be used to write components that can interoperate with other components written to the same binary standard. The double indirection (the client holds a pointer to a pointer to a vtable) allows for vtable sharing among multiple instances of the same object class. On a system with hundreds of object instances, vtable sharing can reduce memory requirements considerably.

There is a lot more to this article (and there are others), but this should give you the basic definition of what is referred to as the "Binary Standard" for a COM component.