COM and .NET Interoperability

COM is a platform-independent, distributed, object-oriented sytem for creating binary software components that can interact. COM is the foundation technology for Microsoft's OLE (compound documents) and ActiveX (Internet-enabled components) technologies, as well as others. "COM and .NET Interoperability" provides a complete overview on the process of building .NET applications which interact (interoperate) with existing COM code. Before digging into that critical topic, Andrew offers a concise overview of the COM architecture, and provides examples using various COM frameworks (C++, ATL, and VB 6.0). Next, the reader will learn the core aspects of the .NET platform and come to understand the use of both C# and VB .NET during the process. With these primers aside, the remainder of the book covers numerous interoperability issues including interacting with the Windows API, event programming, and the process of building custom code conversion utilities.