What is data type marshaling?
Marshaling is the process of packing and unpacking parameters and return values in a way that enables the execution of a cross platform invocation. As mentioned earlier, COM is the key to achieving interoperability between Visual Basic 6.0 and Visual Basic .NET. It is because of the presence of COM that data type marshaling becomes a non-issue in cases where components in different thread apartments interact. The .NET interoperability marshaling enables the interaction between different data types in managed and unmanaged memory. Interop marshaling is performed at run time by the CLR’s marshaling service when functions are invoked within the same COM apartment. When the interaction takes place between managed code and unmanaged code in a different COM apartment or a different process,both the interop marshaler and the COM marshaler are executed.
