Managed Types C++ [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
What's the difference between a non-unmanaged type and a managed type?

I was recently working on an application in C++ and I came across something called managed types, native types, marshaling etc. I am not quite sure what these terms mean. From what I have been reading, it seems that we have managed types in c++ to allow access to some .Net features (.Net native types) and we use marshaling to convert from managed types to native types (vice versa). Am I correct? thanks~

Answer 1

Managed C++ was/is a Microsoft creation. Applications developed using the managed C++ framework operate within a virtual-machine environment the same way that .NET applications do. This provides facility such as more run-time checking, memory allocation. Also, the VM provided garbage collection just like .NET does for C#. The limitation with the managed framework is that it the VM did not support multiple inheritance (C# does not support multiple inheritance). Therefore managed C++ development was restricted. Marshaling is also called serialisation where objects are converted to other "simple" types for transmitting to other processes or machines via RPCs.