A Programmer's Introduction to Visual Basic® .NET

Self-Describing Components

In traditional VB, compiled components created a type library that attempted to define what was in the component as far as classes, interfaces, properties, methods, and events. Communication occurred through a binary interface at the COM level. Unfortunately, one language could expect as parameters data types or structures that are not available to other languages, or that are at least difficult to implement. For example, C++ components often expect pointers or structures to be passed in, and this could be problematic if the calling program is written in Visual Basic. The .NET Framework attempts to solve this by compiling additional data into all assemblies. This additional data is called metadata and allows compiled ...