The .NET Framework is a new computing platform that simplifies application development in the highly distributed environment of the Internet. The .NET Framework is designed to provide a consistent object-oriented programming environment, a code-execution environment that minimizes software deployment and versioning conflicts, which guarantees safe execution of code and to build all communication on industry standards to ensure that code based on the .NET Framework can integrate with any other code.

The Component Object Model (COM) allows an object to expose its functionality to other components and to host applications. Interoperability with COM — or COM interop — allows you to create a COM wrapper around the .NET components, which makes Windows look at them as COM objects and thus makes them available to all of the calling COM applications – including the beloved PHP.