Customer Reviews

.NET and COM: The Complete Interoperability Guide (2 Volume set)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Moving to .NET doesn't mean throwing away your COM code. Integrating the 2 worlds (managed and unmanaged) is achieved via COM Interoperability and there are 2 main scenarios:
1. Writing .NET clients that use COM servers
2. Writing .NET servers to be used by COM clients

This 1500 pager is split into 9 parts containing 24 chapters and 6 appendices. In my opinion, the heart of this work lies in parts 2-5 (650 pages, 14 chapters) that thoroughly detail how to write perfect .NET components for COM clients, COM components for .NET clients, .NET clients for COM components and COM clients for .NET components. Trust me (and anyone that has read this book), there is absolutely nothing else left to be said about the topic.

The remaining 3 parts cover PInvoke (talking to Win32 dlls), advanced topics such as custom marshaling and two comprehensive examples. The quality throughout is of the highest level. It is a joy to read and full of technical information, a lot of it not found anywhere else. Own this book and forget the online help or any internet sites when it comes to interoperability.

The examples used throughout the book are not overly complex or academic or basic; they are just right. Such a balance is hard to strike. What is also hard to find is a book that treats both VB & C++ developers equally. Many authors will benefit by reading Nathan's writings to learn how to achieve that. Whether you plan to write C# or VB.NET code and whether your COM components were written in C++ or VB6 you will not feel left out or bored going through the chapters.

Although large, it can be read linearly and it will definitely serve as a reference text on your shelf. I particularly enjoyed the sidebars (categorised as FAQ, Digging Deeper, Tip, and Caution) which are full of golden information. I could go on praising it but suffice to say that it could easily be sold with money-back guarantee and not a single book would be returned.

This is an amazing reference book for COM and P/Invoke interop (i.e. Win32 interop), an essential topic that most .NET books don't cover well enough. It's essential if you're migrating to .NET, or even if you're writing a non-trivial .NET application from scratch since the .NET Framework has many holes in functionality that must be filled by using interop.

I was skeptical because I've had bad luck with Sams books in the past, but this book is wonderful! It's incredibly thorough, complete, and has lots of useful examples and great sidebars. The author's expertise really shines through... It covers things I couldn't find anywhere else (and I've looked at other Interop books) such as an in-depth treatment of custom marshaling, and I really enjoyed the last chapter with Windows Media Player that demonstrated how to expose existing COM APIs as brand new .NET-looking APIs with very little code.

The chapters are self-contained, clearly organized, and jam-packed with information. I swear, each page I learned something new, and that's a lot of pages! It answered all of my questions and doubts about .NET interop. I can't imagine doing .NET programming without this book.

I spend most of my professional life right now deep in COM Interop of .NET. Although the concepts are rather straightforward, the actual "little things" and using it for real non-trivial COM components have proven to be quite difficult for many. We have run into many difficult issues at the place I work with using it for non-trivial COM components. There are many parts of the System::Runtime::InteropServices namespace that are hard to understand. I have found Adam Nathan to be an invaluable resource here on mailing lists and in private email. So, it was with great anticipation, that I looked forward to his "COM Interop" book shipping. Since we (the place I work) were having so many struggles with COM Interop, we were counting the days. I made sure I had 24 hour ship.

This afternoon, Adam's book gets rushed to my house. Much to my surprise, it is not only everything I expected on COM Interop but a 1579 page complete definitive work on *all* interop including PInvoke. Everything is here in exhaustive detail. Adam, great job. The cover has Don Box saying " This is the last book that should be written about COM programming. There is nothing left to say." I agree.

It's all here. The basics of using COM in .NET and vise versa, iindepth look at the wrapper assemblies, responding to COM events, all aspects of marshaling, modifying interopp assemblies, and much much more.

Highly recommended!

Never one to skimp on books, I ordered three with almost exactly the same title on COM/.NET Interop when I needed some information on the subject. Adam Nathan's book is by far my favorite. I've never found an answer in another book that wasn't in Nathan's (and have found many in his that I didn't find anywhere else).

It seems like this book isn't as easy to get on amazon as it once was--a pity, because it's the first (and maybe only) Interop book you'll need. Maybe he'll come out with another edition as .NET changes...

Currently, this is *the* reference book for the subject area of .NET interop with COM and other unmanaged code via P/Invoke. At almost 1600 pages, it can seem daunting but just treat it like a reference. Open up to the chapter that covers what you are interested in, such as "The Essentials of using COM in Managed Code" (chapter 3) or "The Essential of PInvoke" (chapter 18) or "Customizing COM's View of .NET components" (chapter 12). This last one is one of my favorites because it shows how you have more flexibility in writing COM components in .NET than you have with VB 6.

Another thing I really like about this book is that it has lots of sidebars with tons of useful information that I haven't found anywhere (at least not easily) in the current .NET docs.

Heck, even the appendix is chock full of good stuff like mappings between COM HResults and .NET exceptions and PInvoke definitions for the Win32 API.

This book represents a very detailed analysis of the issues that arise from interoperating between .NET and COM. The book describes the issues involved in using COM components within .NET with the same attention to detail as those in designing .NET components that are used within "legacy" COM apps. The book closes with a detailed discussion of P/Invoke and some more advanced topics such as custom marshalling. The sheer size of the book might be frightening to some but the book's structure makes it easy to pick up exactly what you need. For example, each major part starts off with an example-rich introductory chapter that is a great help in getting started with interop. On the other hand, the book allows the reader to really dig into the minute details of interop. I particularly liked that the book provides lots of valuable design guidelines and an abundance of realistic code examples. Maybe not a book that one wants to read front to cover but an invaluable reference and troubleshooter for anyone who works in the interop area and needs to understand what is really going on under the covers. The most complete work on this important topic yet.

Often finding an appropriate and effective bridge to .NET is a time consuming and problematic task, we had to do a lot of research and benchmarking to find an optimal solution. Having this book by Adam Nathan will save time and effort on building these bridges.

The material in the book is intended for use by experienced professional developers, it's certainly not an entry level tutorial, but the author's style, detailed description supported by examples makes it easy to read and follow. A short introduction to .NET and managed code concepts is provided in the first section of the book. I discovered, however, that this book may be helpful to the people who have no previous COM knowledge, due to the very descriptive and illustrative style.

The author clearly has an extensive experience of COM and a good knowledge of Microsoft .NET. That's why the material is not just an abstract presentation, but a systematically organized guide, focused on potential problems and difficulties a developer may face. However, it is still only focused on COM/.NET interoperability, most probably I would need another book about Java, CORBA working with .NET. The book, as already mentioned, is not an introductory or general conceptual tutorial on programming or architecture, but a very detailed and comprehensive interoperability reference, and it is definitely worth its price. Also the length of the book, about 1600 pages is well justified. Another positive side of the book is that examples are written in VB, C# and managed C++.

I feel a bit uncomfortable writing a review for a tech-book, but I just had to weigh in and express my feelings about this book. I thought this book was incredible. Unbelievably clear and accurate, this book takes you through interop step by step. The book is completely thorough, and leaves nothing to the imagination. Whoever wrote this book obviously demonstrates a degree of mastery of the subject matter not often expressed by even the top computer science gurus. Although his expertise greatly exceeds my own, I was never confused, nor did I feel as if I was being talked down to. I was happy to finally find a comprehensive interop book that I can understand. I highly recommend this book to everyone ... even to people that are smarter than myself.

This book has been an invaluble resource on a .NET/COM interop project I've been working on. Don Box's quote on the cover sums up the title nicely, "This is the last book that should be written about COM programming. There is nothing left to say."

Since I'm a published author myself, I first bought a book on this topic from my publisher Microsoft Press. While accurate, it left a lot to desire. Very little advanced information was provided. However, this title from Adam Nathan's and Sams Publishing leaves nothing out, including extensive references.

If you are working with COM objects from .NET, or vice-versa, this book will be an excellent resource.

This book is great. Weighing in at 1500 pages and theres very little fluff that I can see so far. It has really cleared up my knowledge of how interop is implemented. There is a lot of stuff that I already knew how to do but only from folk lorish "Do this and it works" snippets from various sites around the internet. Its good to have it all in one place. If you're just now starting out in COM/Net development then get this book. It will save you a lot of time. Adam has really hit all the sticking points that new developers tend to have when learning this technology. Its just a pity I didn't have it 6 months ago. Still it was fun finding it all out myself and its good to find things that I learnt by trial and error confirmed as the "Correct" way to do things.

Thanks Adam for a great book.