COM Access from a Silverlight application?

2
votes

At my company we have produced a piece of software that a lot of people want to use in their own applications. As such, we have a set of COM commands that can be called from managed code to load in files, get results etc.

A customer is interested in creating their own Silverlight-based application/website which would interface with our software via COM. Is it possible, if say our software was installed on their server along with their Silverlight application that communication could take place? I'm finding the literature online about COM with Silverlight pretty confusing and could use a point in the right direction.

What steps are required to set up say a basic example showing that communication is at least possible?

Thanks in advance guys.

1
silverlightcom
No, COM only works out-of-browser (OOB). - Hans Passant
So I could suggest they use an OOB application and have a copy of our software installed on the machine they intend to use it on? Not ideal I know, but they seem pretty keen on Silverlight for some reason. Could maybe suggest they use some ASP.NET code on a centralised server with an install, I at least have experience doing this from a small consulting project. - sxthomson
Silverlight was made to be downloaded from a server and run inside the browser. No COM required, as long as you observe the sandbox restrictions. If you can't then Silverlight just isn't the right solution. - Hans Passant

1 Answers

1
votes

It sounds to me that a potential solution is for your COM component to be installed on the server and then a Silverlight-Enabled WCF Service could be created in the host website that would expose a set of methods needed by the Silverlight application.

The Silverlight application could then reference the WCF Service. However there are many rocks hidden below the surface here.

Having the Silverlight Application access the COM component directly (without the WCF Service) would currently require that the Silverlight application be installed on the client machines in Out-of-browser with Elevated trust mode. Of course it would also require that the COM component be installed on each client as well.

Perhaps Silverlight 5 can factor in your consideration. With Silveright 5 it may be possible for your customer to apply elevated trust to a browser hosted silverlight application using Group Policy. They could potentially use Group Policy to install your COM Component on the client machines as well.

There are lots of ifs and buts here you need to nail some of the variables. Its always tricky answering a "I have a customer that..." sort of question.