Application Development Using Visual Basic® and .NET

Calling Managed Components from a COM Client

Obviously, it is much more likely that you will want to write new .NET applications that make use of legacy COM components; however, there may be times when you need to go in the opposite direction. For example, you may have an existing application that makes use of one or more COM components, and you would like to rewrite several of those COM components as .NET components to be used in future .NET solutions. However, in the meantime, you may want to make use of those new .NET components in your existing COM client applications as well.

COM client programs may use early binding (v-table interface) or late binding (IDispatch interface) to access managed .NET components. Early binding requires that type ...