Comments on: Excel and .net http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/ Simon Murphy on professional spreadsheet development stuff Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:42:09 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: Al Gill http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-10651 Wed, 27 Feb 2008 14:45:18 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-10651 True – although I have a fairly cynical attitude to how people run revenue through companies / individuals / whatever. Interesting job for a rainy afternoon though……

‘Memory sticks of tat’ – you’ve seen my code then ;-)

]]> By: Simon http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-10604 Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:24:15 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-10604 Al
I was under the impression the finances were pretty healthy (that is an xla though not COM). You could always spend a couple of quid at companies house to check

The healthy living I was referring to here is actually an Outlook tool, and I can’t remember what it did.

Client dictates suboptimal technology – oh yes had that lots, memory sticks of tat, oh yes carry lots (7 USB storage devices I counted in my bag the other day)
cheers
Simon

]]> By: Al Gill http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-10603 Thu, 21 Feb 2008 20:02:19 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-10603 I’m fascinated by the ‘healthy living’ from COM add-ins. [Plus not having to suffer a train into London Bridge and camp out on client sites would be nice.]

While small groups of developers could pool their resources to deploy it was something else that put me off the ‘used add-in’ on the internet salesman ploy. Specifically, I’ve been told by what should be a reliable source that Gavin Potter’s spreadsheet auditing tool never made that much money – and surely this should be one of the most successful add-ins? Anybody know better? How much due-diligence did you do on your VB6 developer Simon?

Re choice of tool, does anybody else have experience of the client dictating the technology? We had a (banking) client last year that wanted a monte carlo. First thought was @Risk driven by some flavour of VB and an Excel front-end……but the client insisted they wanted VBA because the analysts in their team could (sort of) write VBA and they wouldn’t have to depend on another group for support. It was a great ‘learning experience’ for optimising VBA but the client solution really sucked – but if that’s what the client really wants then…….

PS Is there any one of us who does NOT wander round with a memory stick of our old code and a toolkit of useful stuff we’ve bolted together?

]]> By: Marcus http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4728 Thu, 26 Jul 2007 22:10:06 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4728 Thanks for that feedback Dennis.

I also emailed ‘Add-In Express’ (ages ago) asking about both versions (Delphi & .Net). Their response encouraged me to use the .Net version over the Delphi one.

Regards – Marcus

]]> By: Simon http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4706 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 22:38:36 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4706 Marcus – This was peole selling software apps on the internet, not consulting type stuff which I suspect most of us do.
There was one guy there making a very healthy living from some COM add-ins which he quietly admitted were VB6. No one else admitted to using it as I remember, sadly I didn’t take proper notes so I could be wrong. There is another one in Nov that I hope to go to (client solvency permitting!!).
You could always write a thin VB6 COM wrapper around a native DLL written in Delphi. Or there is probably a component you can buy (the Delphi component marketplace is quite lively) to take the pain away.
Sam and Jon I agree, I don’t think developer and Office can go in the same sentence at MS these days. Office = Ribbon/novice. Developer = Visual Studio.

]]> By: Jon Peltier http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4697 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 15:10:38 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4697 “Would it not have been much simpler to have a developer version of office in Office 2003 and above…”

That goes against the way MS wants us to program. They want us to think VSTO is the developer version of Office.

]]> By: sam http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4695 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 14:08:36 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4695 l …. How about COM Addins developed in the Developer version of Office (up to XP)

Would it not have been much simpler to have a developer version of office in Office 2003 and above…

Sam

]]> By: Dennis Wallentin http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4692 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 08:19:03 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4692 Marcus,

In the past I did try do develop COM add-ins with Delphi but never managed to get it up & running. I asked some questions in a forum and the answers I got was to use VB6…

Kind regards,
Dennis

]]> By: Marcus http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4685 Wed, 25 Jul 2007 00:19:18 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4685 Thanks for the feedback Dennis. Have you (or anyone else) used Delphi to develop a COM add-in for Excel?

I had a look at the ‘Add-In Express’ site some time ago but could find enough resources, or anyone who had used it successfully, to commit.

An interesting point from your stats, Simon is that Delphi ranks higher than VB6 (which I assume is in the 5% Other basket) even though most respondents in your last post – including myself – would have opted for VB6.

All the Excel add-ins I develop (which is about 50 – 60% of my work) are xla’s or VB6 COM.

Can anyone enlighten me on what benefits Delphi has over VB6 in developing COM Add-Ins?

Cheers – Marcus

]]> By: Dennis Wallentin http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4678 Tue, 24 Jul 2007 09:39:37 +0000 http://smurfonspreadsheets.wordpress.com/2007/07/23/excel-and-net/#comment-4678 Hi Simon,

I’m not surprised that Delphi is the favourite tool. I still use Delphi 5.0 when developing small applications to Windows. With small application I mean around 20 – 50 kb exe files without the need of 8 MB systemsfiles that VB 6.0 solutions requires.

One of my main arguments to use VSTO is that the enviroment is 100 % controled which only large corporates can manage to have.

As for managed COM add-ins created with C#/VB.NET the only way to handle mixed versions of the Office suite is to use version neutral PIAs.

I’m only aware of one development tool that offer this and it’s Add-In Express (http://xldennis.wordpress.com/2007/04/17/add-in-express-2007-for-microsoft-net/)

Kind regards,
Dennis

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