Interoperability
The other big topic we want to cover in this chapter is the possibility of a .NET application "talking" to other installed applications in our system. This talking means instantiating these applications and interchanging data between them or asking the other applications to perform tasks we should program ourselves.
Initially (in versions previous to C# 4.0), this technology was exclusively COM-based. The trick was done via Interop using some DLLs called Type Libraries (TLB) or Object Libraries (OLB). The programmer should then use (reference) these libraries and instantiate their internal objects, which represent the internal components of the application to communicate with.
This was possible using a Runtime Callable Wrapper
Get Mastering C# and .NET Framework now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
