dll/com programming basics

[pika]

Hi,

Can anyone walk me through the basic steps to implement a .dll in C#? And also, what is the difference between a com object and dll object? Thank you very much.

[darwen]

Right click the solution in solution explorer. Goto 'add new item' and select 'class library'. That's about it.

Or File/New project and select class library.

dlls in .NET are assemblies. These are .NET dlls, and are 'transparent' i.e. the classes in them can be referenced as if they were a part of your main application.

COM dlls use a technology called COM which is designed as a standard interface to dlls.

Both are different technologies with plus and minus points. COM dlls generally are written in C++ (or VB6).

The ability to register a .NET assembly as a COM dll seems primarily to be there so you can use .NET dlls in ordinary (native) C++ applications.

Darwen.