vb.net - Need shared property accross instances of my COM server

Question

I have a VB.NET COM class with a Shared property, like ABC. The problem is the component is used by several C++ COM exe, so its my understanding that they each will get their own assembly load, and the Shared property will be unique to each EXE. Is there a way to get for this assembly a cross EXE shared property ?

Tx.

Answer 1

Create a Windows Service application and either register your shared singleton object in ROT or simply use RegisterActiveObject/RevokeActiveObject to register it with a unique guid.

Accordingly, use ROT or GetActiveObject to obtain a COM proxy to this object from any other place. You'd need to manually start the windows service if the object has not been registered.

Updated, it's also possible to implement IClassFactory on the singleton object (which would return itself). The service would register the singleton via CoRegisterClassObject, resembling the out-of-proc server behavior. The initial service activation would still be required.

Finally, perhaps the simplest solution is to register the assembly as an out-of-proc DLL surrogate. I haven't tried that, but it ought to be easy with [ComRegisterFunction] / [ComUnregisterFunction] custom interop registration.

Updated, here is an example of using a surrogate process.