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Compatibility of DLLs across .Net

Hi,

My company is intending to develop a suite of DLLs, based on Class Libraries, containing all sorts of standard functions, subroutines and controls that we use in our own developed applications. The DLLs will be developed solely for use on .Net and we will use VB.Net to develop them.

The beauty of using .Net is that, according to the manuals, other developers can invoke these DLLs from any programming language in Visual Studio .Net, for instance C#. However, we have had no experience of this. My questions are therefore:

1.      Is this true? Can other .Net languages use our DLLs unchanged?

2.      If not, are there measures we can take in the DLLs to increase the compatibility with .Net Programming Languages other than VB.Net?

3.      What about use of our .Net DLLs from Internet applications?

4.      Can anybody recommend reading matter that would be relevant?

I’d appreciate some advice on this matter.

Thanks in advance.

SOLUTION

Fernando Soto

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ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

Jacques Bourgeois (James Burger)

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Pirie

ASKER

The 2 comments increased my confidence that what the text books claim is really true, although I would have liked explicit mention that it worked for the Experts in practice i.e. they actually used DLLs created with VB.Net using C# with no problems at all.

The tip about being careful of which version of .Net framework to use was a useful reminder. I have had personal experience of using VB.Net to create an application for a Pocket PC, in which many controls were not available. It's a bind to have to, for instance, create the equivalent of a Combo box by manually superimposing a list box onto a text box. However, this won't happen in this case since we're dealing with Desktops and Laptops all round.

Thanks again, Experts.

Jacques Bourgeois (James Burger)

You can assume that you had an explicit mention that it works. Most experts here talk from experience, not from stuff they have read here and there.

I have a VB.NET dll that I use extensively in all my applications. It contains common constants and routines such as my email address, the logo of my company, methods to calculate taxes and log exceptions. I use that dll with all my applications, without exceptions. Although I program mostly in VB, I also have a couple of applications that were written in C# because that is what my customer wanted. My dll works flawlessly with all these C# applications.

I also distribute a generic version of that dll with my training material for the ADO.NET course that I give since 2002. Half of the programmers who trained with me are C# programmers, and many of them use that without any problem. Only once in all these years did I have to make a minor adjustment to one of the methods in order to make it work with C#.

Pirie

ASKER

Thanks Jacques for all your help. I'll now proceed with 100% confidence.