Managed and Unmanaged Events

The .NET Framework event model differs from the traditional COM event model. Managed events are based on delegates, whereas unmanaged events (in COM) are based on connection points. Both models are tightly coupled event systems, because the client (event receiver) and server (event sender) must run simultaneously.

This section explains how to bridge the managed and unmanaged COM event systems, enabling objects to send and receive events across the interoperation boundary. For specific event syntax, see your programming language documentation.

Note that the .NET Framework does not natively provide a way to interact with Win32 events. To interact with Win32 events, use platform invoke to call the native Win32 event functions from the Win32 API. For more information about platform invoke, see Consuming Unmanaged DLL Functions.

In This Section

• COM Events
  Provides a high-level overview of the connection point event system.

• How to: Handle Events Raised by a COM Source
  Describes how to consume events raised by a COM server.

• How to: Raise Events Handled by a COM Sink
  Describes how to raise events consumed by a COM client.

Related Sections

• Handling and Raising Events
  Provides an overview of the event model in the .NET Framework.

• Loosely Coupled Events
  Describes how to use the COM+ loosely coupled event model from the .NET Framework.