URGENT: ManagedXLL v.s XLL Plus

[anjum.raheel]

Hello,

I have developed a few Excel Add-Ins using Microsoft Excel SDK. I now
wanted to move to something better because bare bones Excel SDK is
limiting and its a pain to do complex things there.

During my search I have came across ManagedXLL and XLL+ on the web. Can
someone please tell me which one is better?

My Add-Ins will be using MFC also for database interaction functions.

An early response will be highly appreciated.

Thanks & Regards

Anjum

 

[Govert van Drimmelen]

Hi Anjum,

Your choice will depend on whether you want to use managed code and the
..Net framework to develop you add-ins, and whether the MFC choice for
database access is really a requirement. A managed .Net environment
will certainly give you a much friendlier development experience, and
there are good database access alternatives to the MFC libraries. If
you really require the data access to use MFC, a native C++ environment
would of course be more natural.

Although calling managed code from Excel has some overhead, in practice
you'll find the performance of add-ins developed using managed code to
be excellent, with the overhead certainly overwhelmed be the cost of
database access in your case. A more serious concern with using managed
add-ins is the security of your code -- compared to native compiled
code (developed using something like XLL+) your code and algorithms
might be more exposed in a managed add-in. To address this issue you
should examine some of the obfuscation tools that are available.

If you want to explore managed add-ins, you should also have a look at
ExcelDna (http://exceldna.typepad.com), my open-source library for
creating Excel add-ins and user-defined functions using managed code.
It is completely free for any commercial use, and will give you a good
start developing add-ind in managed code, even if you move to a
commercial library linke ManagedXll later. To get started with ExcelDna
you only need to install the free .Net runtime.

Regards,
Govert van Drimmelen