The term interoperability describes the capability of different applications to exchange data via a common set of exchangeable formats. It is a characteristic of the product or system, whose interfaces are completely understood, to work with other products or systems.
WPF and Windows Forms present two different architectures for creating application interfaces. The WindowsFormsHost and ElementHost classes are used to implement the interoperation capabilities between these two.
Similarly, WPF provides interoperability with Win32 programs, which are written in unmanaged C++ code:
In this chapter, we will start with interoperation between WPF and WinForm, demonstrating the way to host a WinForm control in a WPF application and a WPF control in a WinForm application. Then, we will move forward to learn interoperability between WPF and Win32, followed by embedding ActiveX controls inside WPF.