Registration-Free Activation of COM Components

The Microsoft Platform SDK does an excellent job of documenting the topics of isolated applications and side-by-side assemblies. However, not everyone equates this topic with that of registration-free activation of COM components. Registration-free COM is a platform feature of great interest to enterprises with locked-down servers and applications isolated on shared infrastructures. This article walks through a working example of the registration-free activation of a native COM component by native clients and, via COM interop, by a managed client. (18 printed pages)