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Excel as a development Platform? pros and cons?
Can somebody please enumerate through the pros and cons of developing an
application completely in Excel? By this I am referring to hijacking the user interface and adding custom menus, toolbars, data validation etc etc. I'd like your analysis to be based on a commercial grade application with extremely complex calculations as opposed to a simple "mortgage calculator". Thanks in advance. I am in possession of an application developed in 100% Excel which was developed by an "Excel Purist". It is upgrade/enhancement time and I am weighing the benefits of keeping it as is or going with a more robust professional looking VB.Net / VB6 front end.. |
#2
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Excel as a development Platform? pros and cons?
"Freddy" wrote...
Can somebody please enumerate through the pros and cons of developing an application completely in Excel? By this I am referring to hijacking the user interface and adding custom menus, toolbars, data validation etc etc. I'd like your analysis to be based on a commercial grade application with extremely complex calculations as opposed to a simple "mortgage calculator". .... Pros - Excel provides a very capable grid control. - If all calculations can be done using worksheet formulas, it may be much more efficient in terms of development time and execution time. Cons - It's not exactly impossible to break macros. - If users disable macros, apps such as you describe can't load their own interfaces. This also leads to a lack of security. |
#3
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Excel as a development Platform? pros and cons?
"Freddy" wrote in message ... Can somebody please enumerate through the pros and cons of developing an application completely in Excel? By this I am referring to hijacking the user interface and adding custom menus, toolbars, data validation etc etc. I'd like your analysis to be based on a commercial grade application with extremely complex calculations as opposed to a simple "mortgage calculator". Thanks in advance. I am in possession of an application developed in 100% Excel which was developed by an "Excel Purist". It is upgrade/enhancement time and I am weighing the benefits of keeping it as is or going with a more robust professional looking VB.Net / VB6 front end.. If you want to market it as a commercial grade application I'd suggest moving it to a .com add-in. That will give you better security for your code while minimising re-work. Keith |
#4
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Excel as a development Platform? pros and cons?
Excel has a very powerful and feature rich UI. 'H' it, for example to
accept user input to cells on a worksheet, involves disabling the effects of most of these features. Remember that the advanced Excel user will know that these features have been disable and will expect them to be available when they switch to another workbook. I have done the hijacking a few times when specifically requested; it has taken a lot of work to achieve and the results have been merely acceptable to users. Where a large degree of control over user interaction is required, I've found a form based UI to be a happier experience for both developer and end user. Where 'extremely complex calculations' are involved the major issue is usually the integrity and maintenance of the calculations rather than the time it takes the machine to crunch the numbers. It is often a different professional (e.g. actuary) who writes the calculation to the one (e.g. software developer) who adds the UI functionality; if the former professional is comfortable with working with Excel formulas it's a good arrangement to keep the calculations within Excel cell formulas on hidden worksheets. Bear in mind that it is trifling easy to unhide and unprotect password-protected sheets so you need to give consideration encrypting your sensitive data and obfuscating your proprietary calculations. You could write a standalone (i.e. exe) app that references your workbook or you could integrate forms into the workbook i.e. an Excel app. For the latter, you can use embedded VBA and useforms or write a dll in Visual Studio (i.e. compiled component) referenced by the workbook. Something worth considering is VS Tools for Microsoft Office 2003 i.e. write a .NET assembly which directly hooks the Excel workbook's events. For details look on MSDN: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/de.../vstointro.asp "Freddy" wrote in message ... Can somebody please enumerate through the pros and cons of developing an application completely in Excel? By this I am referring to hijacking the user interface and adding custom menus, toolbars, data validation etc etc. I'd like your analysis to be based on a commercial grade application with extremely complex calculations as opposed to a simple "mortgage calculator". Thanks in advance. I am in possession of an application developed in 100% Excel which was developed by an "Excel Purist". It is upgrade/enhancement time and I am weighing the benefits of keeping it as is or going with a more robust professional looking VB.Net / VB6 front end.. |
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