First shame on you. When transfer any data over the wire, you should it do it in a system independent format. When for some reason it is impossible to do that, you should take system differences in account. That is: verify what differences there are and (unit)test you're code against the whole valid range and handle invalid data. Shame on the tester to, he also should be aware of difficulties in the domain he is testing. But most of all shame on you. A developer never can hide behind the the tester (or even the architect). He has it's own responsibility to make the software work, without errors.

Don't agree to that. ReleaseComObject should only be called when absolutely required. Even then it's better to call FinalReleaseComObject. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.runtime.interopservices.marshal.releasecomobject.aspx[^] Piet