Sometimes development teams may pursue powerful in-proc interoperability options, looking to leverage both .NET and Java simultaneously, such as calling out to Java EJB servers from within Excel or Word documents, or loading Spring into Outlook in order to evaluate incoming mail messages and process them for local execution. One such alternative is IKVM, which Ted Neward discusses in his latest posting on TheServerSide Interoperability Blog.

Just for the fun of it I once tried it to use the Oracle thin JDBC driver in a C# program. At least my simple program worked fine. I was impressed.

I used IKVM as a wrapper for a JavaCC package that I wrote. The resulting parser was transformed into a DLL using the IKVM static mode. I had success and I am eager to read other tales of developers leaping into this risky space. Which brings up another topic for discussion, how often are best of breed strategies truly engaged? I received a lot of worrisome looks, but went for it anyways - after MUCH testing of course! In my experience, this tool has been very useful. Thanks IKVM! ~tim