Monday, November 28, 2011

Benefit of Primary Interop Assembly (PIA)

A primary interop assembly contains type definitions (as metadata) of types implemented with COM.

Only a single PIA can exist, which needs to be signed with a strong name by the publisher of the COM type library.

One PIA can wrap multiple versions of the same type library.

A COM type library imported as an assembly can be a PIA only if it has been signed and published by the same publisher.

Therefore, only the publisher of a type library can produce a true PIA, that can be considered as the unit of an official type definition for interoperating with the underlying COM types.

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