COM and .NET Interoperability

COM and .NET Interoperability provides a complete overview of the process of building .NET applications that interact (interoperate) with existing COM code. Before digging into that critical topic, author Andrew Troelsen offers a concise overview of the COM architecture and provides examples using various COM frameworks (C++, ATL, and VB 6.0) as well as the core .NET managed languages (C# and VB .NET).

After covering the preliminaries, the book explores numerous issues that arise in interoperability, including interacting with the Win32 API, dynamically generating source code via System.CodeDOM, creating serviced (COM+) components using managed code, manually editing (and recompiling) .NET metadata, and the process of constructing custom COM/.NET conversion utilities. Both intermediate and advanced developers will welcome the practical information they need to quickly work with COM and COM+ in .NET applications, and learn how to create .NET components that are COM compatible.

Andrew Troelsen is a partner, trainer, and consultant at Intertech Inc., and is a leading authority on both .NET and COM. His book Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform won the prestigious 2003 Referenceware Excellence Award and is in its third edition. Also of note are his earlier five-star treatment of traditional COM in the bestselling Developer's Workshop to COM and ATL mirrored in his book, COM and .NET Interoperability, and his top-notch investigation of VB .NET in Visual Basic .NET and the .NET Platform: An Advanced Guide. Troelsen has a degree in mathematical linguistics and South Asian studies from the University of Minnesota, and is a frequent speaker at numerous .NET-related conferences. He currently lives in Minneapolis with his wife, Amanda, and spends his free time investigating .NET and waiting for the Wild to win the Stanley Cup. You can check out his blog at AndrewTroelsen.blogspot.com.