VBA and Design Patterns

[Eric]

Anybody know of any links or other material that has tried to apply design
patterns to help get the most out of the limitations of VBA??

Thanks,
Eric

 

[TC]

What limitiations are you thinking of?

TC

 

[Eric]

Inheritance and overloading.

 

[Evan Stone]

Inheritance and overloading.

Honestly I don't think Design Patterns are necessarily going to help you get
over those limitations, but I found this book to be extremely helpful when I
was working with VB6, and it may help you as well:

Microsoft Visual Basic Design Patterns (Microsoft Professional Series)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...0?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v=glance

It does propose some interesting methodologies for getting around the
problem of implemenation inheritance (through encapsulation and interfaces,
IIRC), so that might be interesting to you as well (in addition to the
implementation of the design patterns).

Hope this helps!

evan stone | software engineer

 

[Eric]

Thanks Evan

I guess I'm also partially asking a broader question as well, and you sound
pretty qualified to answer.

I'm looking to design and implement a suite of related tools that make use
of MS Office, and while my first need is to use these tools in our own
company, I see a market out there; which means I want to build a robust and
professional quality app. So:

1) What *is* the most appropriate language and tool set to use, given
- I know VBA pretty well, but my primary experience is with java and c++;
and to me a professional app is one that supports full OOP as well as easily
available tools for regression testing (like junit is to java). So is an
industrial strength IDE that supports refactoring, etc.
- I won't have much time to do most of the programming, and will need to
contract it out (ideally in Macau, China, where I will likely need to be for
this project.

Any insights and suggestions MUCH appreciated.

Thanks,
Eric

 

[TC]

As I understand it, VBA will be around for some time yet. (It had
better be, or my 75k loc VBA app will be in trouble!)

However, Office 12 is close to beta, and there is a whole host of
related new technologies; eg. VSTO ("visual studio tools for office?")

I don't pretend to know much about those tools. But clearly, unless you
have investigated them, you would have to think carefully before you
commenced a new large project in VBA. (As opposed to making a strategic
decision to maintain an old one.)

Browse around some of the Office blogs & see what they're buzzing
about. http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh is a fair starting point.

HTH,
TC

 

[TC]

Or google on "vsto vba" without the quotes. There are tons of
references.

HTH,
TC