Rating:  - Very detailed treatment of .NET/COM interop
This book represents a very detailed analysis of the issues that arise from interoperating between .NET and COM. The book describes the issues involved in using COM components within .NET with the same attention to detail as those in designing .NET components that are used within "legacy" COM apps. The book closes with a detailed discussion of P/Invoke and some more advanced topics such as custom marshalling. The sheer size of the book might be frightening to some but the book's structure makes it easy to pick up exactly what you need. For example, each major part starts off with an example-rich introductory chapter that is a great help in getting started with interop. On the other hand, the book allows the reader to really dig into the minute details of interop. I particularly liked that the book provides lots of valuable design guidelines and an abundance of realistic code examples. Maybe not a book that one wants to read front to cover but an invaluable reference and troubleshooter for anyone who works in the interop area and needs to understand what is really going on under the covers. The most complete work on this important topic yet.
Rating: - Well Worth the Money
Currently, this is *the* reference book for the subject area of .NET interop with COM and other unmanaged code via P/Invoke. At almost 1600 pages, it can seem daunting but just treat it like a reference. Open up to the chapter that covers what you are interested in, such as "The Essentials of using COM in Managed Code" (chapter 3) or "The Essential of PInvoke" (chapter 18) or "Customizing COM's View of .NET components" (chapter 12). This last one is one of my favorites because it shows how you have more flexibility in writing COM components in .NET than you have with VB 6.
Another thing I really like about this book is that it has lots of sidebars with tons of useful information that I haven't found anywhere (at least not easily) in the current .NET docs.
Heck, even the appendix is chock full of good stuff like mappings between COM HResults and .NET exceptions and PInvoke definitions for the Win32 API.
Rating:  - So-so book
While this book definitely has some decent code examples, I have to say that I was very disappointed overall. There are many important bits that are completely left out (IDispatchEx comes to mind) and the author seems very quick to send you scurrying to the online help. This book is way overhyped by the author's friends various newsgroups and mailing lists as it fails to live up to expectations...
Rating:  - Everything you need
This book is great. Weighing in at 1500 pages and theres very little fluff that I can see so far. It has really cleared up my knowledge of how interop is implemented. There is a lot of stuff that I already knew how to do but only from folk lorish "Do this and it works" snippets from various sites around the internet. Its good to have it all in one place. If you're just now starting out in COM/Net development then get this book. It will save you a lot of time. Adam has really hit all the sticking points that new developers tend to have when learning this technology. Its just a pity I didn't have it 6 months ago. Still it was fun finding it all out myself and its good to find things that I learnt by trial and error confirmed as the "Correct" way to do things.
Thanks Adam for a great book.
Rating: - The definitive work on Interop in general! Highly recomended
I spend most of my professional life right now deep in COM Interop of .NET. Although the concepts are rather straightforward, the actual "little things" and using it for real non-trivial COM components have proven to be quite difficult for many. We have run into many difficult issues at the place I work with using it for non-trivial COM components. There are many parts of the System::Runtime::InteropServices namespace that are hard to understand. I have found Adam Nathan to be an invaluable resource here on mailing lists and in private email. So, it was with great anticipation, that I looked forward to his "COM Interop" book shipping. Since we (the place I work) were having so many struggles with COM Interop, we were counting the days. I made sure I had 24 hour ship.
This afternoon, Adam's book gets rushed to my house. Much to my surprise, it is not only everything I expected on COM Interop but a 1579 page complete definitive work on *all* interop including PInvoke. Everything is here in exhaustive detail. Adam, great job. The cover has Don Box saying " This is the last book that should be written about COM programming. There is nothing left to say." I agree.
It's all here. The basics of using COM in .NET and vise versa, iindepth look at the wrapper assemblies, responding to COM events, all aspects of marshaling, modifying interopp assemblies, and much much more.
Highly recommended!
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