COM components are often used in backend, require elaborate workflows, complex GUIs. For ad hoc testing at for example customer site with specific inputs, separate test application needs to be created. APITester tries to solve this problem, It reads the typelibrary and presents a simple user interface that lists exposed apis and their parameters.
Presently .NET framework provides RCW (Remote callable wrapper) mechanism for .NET code to interface with COM components. However it does not support late binding required for scripting.
WCF is widely used in managed software for IPC. However porting existing COM based applications to WCF architecture can be daunting task. A balance can be achieved by deploying existing COM based applications as a WCF service so that it can be accessed by WCF clients.
COM components can also be generated under .net environment using Visual studio and languages such as C#.
Windows scripting component or WSC provide an easier javascript or vscript based solution for creating COM components using command line tools. WSC are essentially XML based that can be used to generate COM based object that can even support events.
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