Professional Visual Basic Interoperability - COM and VB6 to .NET

Microsoft .NET marks a huge advance in software development. However, organizations have invested heavily in their existing software infrastructure. Consequently, a lengthy transition period will be necessary in which the new .NET platform must interoperate with old systems.

There are major areas of incompatibility between the COM and .NET technologies. These prevent a simple automated strategy from migrating VB6 code into Visual Basic .NET. This book investigates these incompatibilities and shows you how to work around them. We start by covering COM interoperability in detail, and then broaden the focus to examine a range of issues that must be handled in order for VB6 and COM code to run on .NET.

This book covers:

• Using COM components from .NET and .NET assemblies from COM
• Calling COM components in MTS/COM+ from .NET
• Visual Basic .NET and COM in COM+
• Custom marshalling
• Threading issues
• DCOM, Remoting, and Web Services
• Sharing configuration information
• Binary and random flat file access in .NET
• Using ADO in .NET
• Calling API or static DLL functions from .NET
• Preparing your VB6 code for migration to .NET

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 - The Importance of Interoperability
Chapter 2 - Using COM Components from .NET
Chapter 3 - Using .NET Assemblies from COM
Chapter 4 - Calling COM Components in MTS and COM+ from .NET
Chapter 5 - Visual Basic .NET and COM in COM+
Chapter 6 - Custom Marshaling
Chapter 7 - Threading Issues
Chapter 8 - DCOM, Remoting, and Web Services
Chapter 9 - Sharing Configuration Information
Chapter 10 - Binary and Random Flat File Access in .NET
Chapter 11 - Using ADO in .NET
Chapter 12 - Calling API or Static DLL Functions from .NET
Chapter 13 - Interoperability of ActiveX Controls in .NET
Chapter 14 - How Do I Prepare VB6 Code for Migration?