ok so does it make sense to use COM in C# applications?

Does anybody know of a good free Administrator tool for Firebird? i.e. where you can look at tables, execute queries etc.

Is Global Assembly Cache similar to COM? It seems you register objects which can be used by other applications. Other applications can then create objects by referencing the GAC?

I am studying a TreeView implementation. The TreeView uses classes which encapsulate certain controls such as textbox, checkbox etc. Each item class inherits from Component (not Control). Generally speaking, why would you inherit from Component like this?