A DSOM application will not execute if the underlying DSOM support is not active. Therefore a good client application might query and save the current state of the DSOM daemon and Workplace Shell DSOM server and start them, if required before issuing any DSOM calls.

A client application must declare and initialize the DSOM run-time before attempting to create or access a remote object. The SOMD_Init procedure initializes all of the DSOM run-time. A client application must also merge the SOM class manager with the Workplace Shell class manager and initialize all application classes used by the program. For each class, the corresponding <classname>NewClass call should be made. When creating a Workplace Shell DSOM application, each class referenced in the hierarchy must be initialized.