Background:

I have an application that stores its information in a
database. I am now working on adding an Excel piece to
the program that allows the user to make very limited and
structured queries to the database.

For example, in a cell they can enter the
formula '=LightFixtureCount("A")' and my program will
return the count of light fixtures of type A. The user
will either type theses formulas in by hand (the rare
case) or use a dialog box that I write toc reate the
formula. In this example, the box would have a list of
light fixtures that are defined in the database. After
selecting the fixture they want, the above formula is
created for them and inserted in the active cell.

Actual Question:

If you were going to do this, what combination of
technologies would you use? I would like it to work with
Excel 2000 and later. I do not need to support Excel 97.
If your answer would be different if I did not need to
support Excel 2000, I would be interested to hear that as
well.

Right now, I have a quick-and-dirty version running in an
XLA file. It is working pretty well, but I am concerned
that I might run into problems of scale in the future as
the number of different queries I support grows larger.

I have no experience developing on top of MS Office, so
any advice anyone might have would be appreciated. Is my
XLA file gonna last me for two years? Will I wish that I
had done this in C# six months from now? Or should I
implement in VB?

Thanks,
David Robison