General COM question

As a VC++ developer, I've created COM components that are used by clients developed using VC++. But now I'm developing a COM component, in VC++, that will be accessed by a VB client. I've got interfaces whose parameters are of basic data types such as unsigned char, unsigned short, char (string), int, double, etc... Is it better to use a VARIANT data type instead of the basic data types? Is there an equivilant to the unsigned (type) data type in VB? Currently a VB client will use this component but in the future, who knows, it could be Java, VBScript, JScript, C#, etc...? Thanks for any help you can give.

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If you use the automation data types, your code will be accessable by any language that supports them (VC++, VB, VBScript, JScript, JavaScript, Java, WSH COM objects, etc.).

Hope this helps.
Spectre