Common Type System (CTS)
The CLI specification defines a rich type system that far surpasses COM's capabilities. It's called the Common Type System (CTS). The CTS defines at the runtime level how types are declared and used. Previously, language compilers controlled the creation and usage of types, including their layout in memory. This led to problems when a component written in one language tried to pass data to a
component written in a different language. Anyone who has written Visual Basic 6 code to call Windows API functions, for instance, or who has tried to pass a JavaScript array to a component written either in Visual Basic 6 or C++, is aware of this problem. It was up to the developer to translate the data to be understandable to the receiving component. The CTS obliterates this problem by providing the following features:
The CLI specification defines a rich type system that far surpasses COM's capabilities. It's called the Common Type System (CTS). The CTS defines at the runtime level how types are declared and used. Previously, language compilers controlled the creation and usage of types, including their layout in memory. This led to problems when a component written in one language tried to pass data to a
component written in a different language. Anyone who has written Visual Basic 6 code to call Windows API functions, for instance, or who has tried to pass a JavaScript array to a component written either in Visual Basic 6 or C++, is aware of this problem. It was up to the developer to translate the data to be understandable to the receiving component. The CTS obliterates this problem by providing the following features:
