Rating: 
Summary: Truly is the Complete Guide
Review: This book has been an invaluble resource on a .NET/COM interop project I've been working on. Don Box's quote on the cover sums up the title nicely, "This is the last book that should be written about COM programming. There is nothing left to say."
Since I'm a published author myself, I first bought a book on this topic from my publisher Microsoft Press. While accurate, it left a lot to desire. Very little advanced information was provided. However, this title from Adam Nathan's and Sams Publishing leaves nothing out, including extensive references.
If you are working with COM objects from .NET, or vice-versa, this book will be an excellent resource.
Rating:
Summary: Very detailed treatment of .NET/COM interop
Review: 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:
Summary: Great .Net Inteop Guide
Review: This is a great book that covers .Net Interop. It covers Interop more in debth compared to other books that I have read. All the ideas covered apply to Visual Studio 2002 and as well as Visual Studio 2003. The book is well layed out and information is easy to find.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have for anyone serious about .NET
Review: This is an amazing reference book for COM and P/Invoke interop (i.e. Win32 interop), an essential topic that most .NET books don't cover well enough. It's essential if you're migrating to .NET, or even if you're writing a non-trivial .NET application from scratch since the .NET Framework has many holes in functionality that must be filled by using interop.I was skeptical because I've had bad luck with Sams books in the past, but this book is wonderful! It's incredibly thorough, complete, and has lots of useful examples and great sidebars. The author's expertise really shines through... It covers things I couldn't find anywhere else (and I've looked at other Interop books) such as an in-depth treatment of custom marshaling, and I really enjoyed the last chapter with Windows Media Player that demonstrated how to expose existing COM APIs as brand new .NET-looking APIs with very little code. The chapters are self-contained, clearly organized, and jam-packed with information. I swear, each page I learned something new, and that's a lot of pages! It answered all of my questions and doubts about .NET interop. I can't imagine doing .NET programming without this book.
Rating:
Summary: A must-have for anyone serious about .NET
Review: This is an amazing reference book for COM and P/Invoke interop (i.e. Win32 interop), an essential topic that most .NET books don't cover well enough. It's essential if you're migrating to .NET, or even if you're writing a non-trivial .NET application from scratch since the .NET Framework has many holes in functionality that must be filled by using interop. I was skeptical because I've had bad luck with Sams books in the past, but this book is wonderful! It's incredibly thorough, complete, and has lots of useful examples and great sidebars. The author's expertise really shines through... It covers things I couldn't find anywhere else (and I've looked at other Interop books) such as an in-depth treatment of custom marshaling, and I really enjoyed the last chapter with Windows Media Player that demonstrated how to expose existing COM APIs as brand new .NET-looking APIs with very little code. The chapters are self-contained, clearly organized, and jam-packed with information. I swear, each page I learned something new, and that's a lot of pages! It answered all of my questions and doubts about .NET interop. I can't imagine doing .NET programming without this book.
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