Simple COM/DCOM interface question (IUnknown)

As a genreal rule: If your interfaces are exposed to more parties than just you and yourself, it is always a good idea to follow the design that MS gave for that situation. The penalty you'll pay for implementing IUnknown's methods (which is in fact neglectible) is lesser than the one you pay for not doing so in the long run.

Thanks for the response, however, not quite what I was after.  Of course you don't have to implement IUnknown's methods but if your COM object is to behave like a COM object at all you are going to have to implement the IUnknown's interface methods.  If you derive from IUnknown you inherit its interface but you still need to implement the interface.  Microsoft, and other literature, state that all Interfaces must inherit from IUnknown.  However, I am wondering if in the field this is the common practice...I mean I could conceivably implement AddRef(), Release(), and QueryInterface() without implementing the IUnknown interface. I was wondering how it is really done in the field versus how it "should" be done.  Basically, if I make the assumption that all COM interfaces derive from IUnknown and attempt to cast a void* interface pointer to IUnknown to call the Release method the OS isn't going to be happy if that assumption isn't correct.

>>However, I am wondering if in the field this is the common practice...I mean I could conceivably implement AddRef(),
>>Release(), and QueryInterface() without implementing the IUnknown interface

But that would not really make sense in a COM world. The idea is that IUnknown serves as the least common denominator on an *interface* level (and I'm talking C++ interfaces here) to ensure vtable compatibility.

Remember that when using

interface IQI {
public:
virtual HRESULT QueryInterface (...) = 0;
};

interface IRef {
public:
virtual void AddRef () = 0;
virtual void Release () = 0;
};

class ISomething : public IQI, public IRef {

//...

};

is NOT identical to

class ISomething: public IUnknown {
};

Thanks for the response jkr,

So, in your professional opinion, I should never run into a problem with the following:

IMyInterface* pInterface = GetInterfacePtr(m_CLSID, myInterface_IID);

((IUnknown*)pInterface)->Release();

Since all COM objects must inherit the IUnknown interface (regardless of how they implement the IUnknown interface methods)?

The reason, obviously, is because I don't want or care to know the actual interface that the CLSID and IID refer to.  If I have a valid pointer to some interface I should beable to cast it to a IUnknown interface to call the Release() method.  Since it is overidden (throught vtable magic :) )  the appropriate functionalty to decrement the reference count on the object should be performed.