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How to create and use a Custom COM Marshaler in .NET
Microsoft has done a nice job when it designed Component Object Model, also known as COM, even if the system’s complexity was painful for some developers. To fix that, they first created Vb6 (well…no comment) to soften the burden of consuming COM objects, while C++ was still a little bit rough to use (but anything concerning COM was possible !). After a few years, they finally created the .NET framework. As a fair part of the Windows architecture was based on COM and COM+, they had to make the most popular language (C# and VB.NET) of the platform compatible with it. I’m currently working on a system where the .NET code use a lot of COM to communicate with other parts of the system, and I can tell you that even most of the features of COM can be used, sometimes you have to dig deeper to make .NET component compatible with other languages. I saw a few custom marshaler described on the net, but no one done to marshal an array of “anything” (called VARIANT in COM), so I thought it could be interesting to share it with others.
The TechDays 2011 are over
Let me share a nice picture took by a friend of mine during my Windows 7 kernel session:
Here is a link to the PowerPoint documents (in French!):
Les nouveautes du noyau de Windows 7 et de Windows 2008 R2
Et si Sherlock Holmes faisait du debugging ?
I’ll share some media content as soon as it’s available. In the meantime, I would like to thanks all the people who came to those sessions, my two co-speakers (Herve ‘kernel debugger’ Chapalain and Gilles ‘Captain C++’ Guimard), Eric Vernie who let me do this sessions, and of course Bruno Boucard, without whom none of this would happen.
Here comes the Microsoft TechDays 2011
I have the pleasure to announce you that I will speak on two sessions during the next Microsoft TechDays in Paris.
First one will focus on how to find and destroy bugs: “What if Sherlock Homes did debugging ?”.
Second one will highlight major changes in the kernel of new Microsoft operating system: “Kernel changes in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2”.
I will post the PowerPoint files after the sessions, and a video link if I can find it. Sadly, it will be in French…but I’ll develop on BugSlasher a few things that I learned doing those sessions.
Hope I can see you there!
BugSlasher 