Interoperability (C# Programming Guide)

Collapse All

Language Filter

This page is specific to

Microsoft Visual Studio 2008/.NET Framework 3.5

Other versions are also available for the following:

C# Programming Guide

Interoperability (C# Programming Guide)

Interoperability enables you to preserve and take advantage of existing investments in unmanaged code. Code that runs under the control of the common language runtime (CLR) is called managed code, and code that runs outside the CLR is called unmanaged code. COM, COM+, C++ components, ActiveX components, and Microsoft Win32 API are examples of unmanaged code.

The .NET Framework enables interoperability with unmanaged code through platform invoke services, the System.Runtime.InteropServices namespace, C++ interoperability, and COM interoperability (COM interop).

In This Section

Interoperability Overview (C# Programming Guide): Describes methods to interoperate between C# managed code and unmanaged code.
How to: Use Platform Invoke to Play a Wave File (C# Programming Guide): Describes how to use platform invoke services to play a .wav sound file on the Windows operating system.
Example COM Class (C# Programming Guide): Demonstrates how to expose a C# class as a COM object.

C# Language Specification

For more information, see the following sections in the C# Language Specification:

10.6.7 External methods
17.5 Attributes for Interoperation
18.9 Dynamic memory allocation

Concepts

Reference

Other Resources