Careers: Interviews
Expert in Interop Adam Nathan
This week, Stephen Ibaraki, ISP, has
an exclusive interview with Adam Nathan. Adam is
unquestionably the world’s foremost expert in
.NET/COM Interop and the Common Language Runtime.
Discussion:
Q: Adam, you are at the top of the world’s elite in
.NET and COM applications and interoperability
issues. This is a rare opportunity for us. Thank you
for agreeing to this interview and sharing your
experiences, wisdom, and vast skills with our
audience.
A: Thank you, but you’re too flattering! Soon there
will probably be many Interop gurus around.
Hopefully they’ll gain their knowledge from reading
my book!
Q: What led you to take your honours B.S. in
Computer Science at Cornell? Can you detail your
history that eventually took you into computing?
A: Ever since fourth grade I would program in BASIC
just for fun, but I never considered going into
computer science until my freshman year of college.
I enrolled in Cornell University’s College of
Engineering because I always liked math and science,
but didn’t have any specific plans for what field I
wanted to go into. In the second half of my freshman
year, I took an introductory computer science class
that was mandatory for all engineers, and that class
made me realize that computer science was the right
field for me. It was just as fun as when I
programmed as a hobby!
Q: You are a software design engineer on Microsoft’s
.NET Common Language Runtime QA team and made
numerous contributions to the design of Interop. You
also filed more bugs than anyone else and due to the
quality of your work, had the bulk of them resolved;
equivalent to batting a 1000. What were the reasons
and outcomes for taking on the role of an external
software developer?
A: I came to Microsoft to experience what it’s like
to be a part of first-rate software development, and
the experience has been phenomenal. I had no idea
about the magnitude of the project I was working on
until shortly before the PDC [Professional
Developers Conference] in 2000. Since then, it’s
become clear that .NET is changing the face of
software development, both inside and outside of
Microsoft. As for the role of finding bugs in the
product, I think it’s a lot of fun (and not that
different from doing something like proofreading a
book).
Q: You were a contributing author for the
best-selling ASP.NET: Tips, Tutorial, and Code by
SAMS. How did you get into writing and what lessons
did you learn from that experience? Can you share
some tips from the book?
A: Due to the tremendous interest in the .NET
platform, there was (and still is) a tremendous
demand for books. The opportunity to contribute to
this ASP.NET book presented itself while I was in
the midst of writing my Interop book. It was my
first exposure to the complete editing cycle
involved when publishing a book (since my Interop
book was published about 6 months later), so that
was an interesting learning experience.
One important tip from the book is to use the
aspcompat=true page directive when invoking Visual
Basic 6 COM components from an ASP.NET page. Among
other things, this directive makes the page run on
an STA thread rather than an MTA thread. Since VB6
COM components are apartment-threaded, using
aspcompat=true can result in a huge performance
improvement by avoiding cross-apartment COM
marshaling.
Q: Your current book, “.NET and COM, The Complete
Interoperability Guide” by SAMS is the finest book
in this area available today and has received rave
reviews for its completeness. I would second this
assessment and highly recommend the book as the best
available for .NET and COM developers. What made
your write this book, especially during your first
year of marriage, and while providing your
invaluable and unique services to Microsoft? Who
should read this book? What are the objectives of
the book? Can you share some tips from the book?
A: Thanks. I saw a huge need for a complete resource
for COM Interoperability and Platform Invocation
Services (PInvoke). These can be complex
technologies, and are especially important to
understand as software developers evaluate what to
do with large bodies of existing software.
Interoperating with existing software is one of the
first .NET topics a developer should master.
I had seen other .NET books dedicate a chapter or
two to COM Interoperability and/or PInvoke. These
chapters sometimes provide a nice introduction to
the technologies, but real-world applications almost
never behave as nicely as canonical examples.
Instead, they often require techniques that just
can't be covered in one or two chapters. So I felt
compelled to share what I had learned. It was a
grueling process, but I’m extremely lucky to have a
supportive wife who suffered through the long nights
and weekends when I did nothing but write.
Who should read the book? Anyone wanting to mix
existing pre-.NET software (a primary example being
Windows itself) with .NET applications or
components. It demonstrates how to:
- Leverage existing software (COM-based or
not) in new .NET applications.
- Plug new .NET components into an existing
COM architecture, taking advantage of .NET's
many features rather than continuing to program
the COM way.
- Design your software to work well in both
.NET and COM-based surroundings.
- Call any unmanaged APIs (such as Win32
functions) in any .NET language.
- Interoperate with COM+ and DCOM objects, as
well as ActiveX controls.
I don't expect the reader to know anything about
.NET in advance, but the more background in .NET you
have (and experience with one .NET language), the
better off you'll be. Most of the book assumes
familiarity with either "raw COM" or COM through
Visual Basic 6, but its concepts are explained in
enough detail that developers should still get a lot
out of the book without in-depth prior knowledge.
Even if you don't care about COM, you should still
find its coverage of PInvoke valuable.
I could go on forever with tips from the book (since
it has well over 150 tips embedded as sidebars), so
to limit the scope, here are 10 quick tips for
designing .NET class libraries that are easy to use
by COM clients:
- Avoid creating members with names that
conflict with method names of IUnknown or
IDispatch, such as Release or Invoke. Such
members are exposed to COM with mangled names to
avoid collision.
- Provide alternatives to parameterized
constructors, because they are not directly
exposed to COM.
- Don't create APIs that rely on static
members, because they are not easily accessible
from COM.
- Don't create APIs that rely on methods or
properties of value types, because they are not
directly exposed to COM.
- Don't create APIs that rely on nested
arrays, because the Interop marshaler does not
support them.
- Think twice before using overloaded methods,
because they are exposed to COM with unintuitive
and version-brittle names (suffixed with _2, _3,
and so on).
- Don't forget the benefits of interface-based
programming. When defining public classes, it
often makes sense to define a corresponding
interface for the class to implement, and to
always use the interface type rather than the
class type in any public method, property,
field, or event definitions. Also mark the class
with ClassInterfaceAttribute and its
ClassInterfaceType.None value to make the
implemented interface the default.
- Throw exception types defined in the
mscorlib assembly whenever appropriate, because
user-defined exceptions don't get the same
special treatment by the Interop marshaler.
- If you define a method that returns null
(Nothing in VB .NET) to indicate failure,
provide the option for it to throw an exception
on failure instead. Because COM clients see S_OK
returned whenever an exception isn't thrown, not
throwing an exception may mistakenly lead them
to believe the call succeeded when it really did
not.
- Use ComSourceInterfacesAttribute on classes
that expose events, so they expose connection
points to COM event sinks.
Q: You have regularly provided technical assistance
on .NET e-mail lists, served on the panel of .NET
experts, provided technical assistance during
hands-on labs, prepared demonstrations for the 2000
and 2001 Microsoft Professional Developers
Conferences and no doubt will be heavily involved
for 2002. Can you provide us with tips from this
unbounded experience that you have and from other
projects that you have worked on?
A: My only advice is to make use of online
newsgroups. These groups, provided not just by
Microsoft but many other companies as well, are
great resources for getting just about any kind of
question answered.
Q: Describe future book titles and articles can we
expect from you?
A: I have no plans for writing any more books or
articles, but I’m not ruling out the possibility of
doing so in the future.
Q: What are the ten top traps or pitfalls that
developers should be wary of and avoid?
A: Just one – Don’t believe everything you read in
the press when it comes to technology! I can’t count
the number of times I’ve read an article that was
misleading or just flat out wrong about something
.NET related, and I’m sure it happens all the time
for other technologies, too. Do your homework and
let facts guide your decisions about making
technological decisions.
Q: Can you share your 10 leading career tips for
those thinking of getting into the computing field?
A: I don’t have ten tips; just two:
1. Make sure that enjoying computing is your
motivation for entering the field, as opposed to
something like monetary gain.
2. Take the time to learn something new every once
in awhile. Technology is constantly evolving, so you
need to evolve with it.
Q: You have a reputation for being plugged into the
stream of computing consciousness. What are the
hottest topics that all IT professionals must know
to be successful in the short term and long term?
A: Besides the .NET Framework and associated
technologies, the only topic that comes to mind is
security. I think most people see how crucial
properly-secured systems are these days, and being
knowledgeable enough to prevent security breaches is
vital.
Q: What would be your recommended top five
references for the serious developer?
A: I would recommend:
- .NET and COM: The Complete Interoperability
Guide (Sams)
- .NET Framework Security (Addison Wesley)
- Applied Microsoft .NET Framework Programming
(Microsoft Press)
- Hacking Exposed: Network Security Secrets &
Solutions, Third Edition (McGraw-Hill)
- Design Patterns (Addison Wesley)
Q: You have so many accomplishments. What do you do
to relax?
A: Not enough! But watching TV with my wife and our
cat (Shadow, who appears in the book in the example
of using COM Interop with Windows Media Player) is
probably my favorite way to relax.
Q: If you were doing this interview, what two
questions would you ask of someone in your position
and what would be your answers?
A: I think you’ve covered it all! I’d ask about the
book and the motivation for writing it, just as you
did.
Q: It’s a blank slate, what added comments would you
like to give to enterprise corporations and
organizations?
A: Only to take a serious look at .NET if you
haven’t already. It’s beginning to revolutionize the
way software is created, and things will only get
better in future versions!
Q: Adam, thank you for sharing your valuable
insights with us today and we look forward to
reading your books, and articles.
A: My pleasure. |
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