Summary

Some people like to say that COM is dead. Microsoft might be moving away from COM, but given that some companies still have Windows 95 as their standard desktop operating system, COM will no doubt be around for a very long time. Therefore, Microsoft made .NET capable of integrating with COM in several ways.

First, .NET can call COM components. Accomplishing this is very easy for the .NET developer. VS .NET will create an assembly for you that acts as a wrapper to the COM component, or the developer can create the wrapper using the Tlbimp.exe utility.

Second, .NET can expose assemblies to COM components. Using the Regasm.exe utility, you can create a type library from an assembly's manifest, and have the type library registered in the registry. As long as the COM application and the .NET component are in the same directory, or the .NET component is placed into the GAC, your COM application can use the .NET component.

Finally, VB .NET allows you to continue to call API functions in the operating system using the Declare statement. This means you can take advantage of the power of the underlying operating system.