Any class that can be instantiated and used by a COM client can be created and used by a NGWS client. Just as NGWS classes must be registered before COM clients can instantiate them, so COM classes must provide metadata before NGWS clients can instantiate them.
The TlbImp command-line utility converts the classes and interfaces contained in a COM type library to NGWS metadata. Once the class' metadata is available, NGWS clients can create an instance of the COM class and call the instance’s methods, just as if it were a NGWS object. TlbImp converts an entire type library at one time. You cannot use TlbImp to generate type information for a subset of the types defined in a type library.
For reference information on command-line switches for TlbImp, see Type Library Importer (TlbImp.exe).
A COM class' metadata is available through a NGWS namespace, just like any other NGWS class. This section explains Namespaces and COM Objects.
COM classes without a type library are also accessible to NGWS clients through a special class called __COMObject. __ComObject, an internal class in the System namespace, is derived from MarshalByRefObject. __ComObject is the root class for all COM wrappers, which wrap COM objects accessed from the NWGS runtime. This class defines only the basics, and exists solely to make COM classes with no type library available to NGWS clients. For more details, see Accessing a COM Object that has no Type Library.