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Comparison

How does Userware for Office compare to similar solutions?

  VBA
(Visual Basic for Applications)		 VSTO
(Visual Studio Tools for Office)		 Userware
for
Office
Speed of development:
  • Development environment is built into Office
 YES NO YES
  • Source control (i.e. ability to work collaboratively on the same source code, to keep track of the changes, and to revert to previous versions)
 NO PARTIALLY
(requires additional installations)		 YES
  • Development environment has advanced development and debugging features
 PARTIALLY
(the development environment is not as advanced as that of VSTO)		 YES PARTIALLY
(the development environment is not as advanced as that of VBA or VSTO, and some debugging features are under development)
  • No need to restart Office to test the changes
 YES NO YES
Speed of deployment:
  • Automatic deployment of the extensions throughout the company
 PARTIALLY
(you can save a macro on a template and save the template on a newtork server, but the cycle is long and it raises several issues)		 PARTIALLY
(you can use ClickOnce, but it only updates when Office restarts, and it can only notify of updates, not new Add-Ins)		 YES
  • Do not require end-users to perform an installation or to restart Office in order to take advantage of new Add-Ins or macros
 YES NO YES
Deployment features:
  • Users can browse the extensions (Add-Ins or macros) directly from the Office user interface
 NO NO YES
  • Users can have multiple versions of the same extension
 PARTIALLY
(VBA macros are linked to documents, so it is difficult to handle versions)		 PARTIALLY
(handling different versions of the same Add-In is troublesome)		 YES
  • Extensions can be run offline (i.e. while the computer is not connected to the company intranet)
 YES YES PARTIALLY
(full offline support is under development)
  • Extensions are downloaded only when needed (streaming)
 NO NO YES
Features of the developed code:
  • The code is compiled not interpreted
 NO YES YES
  • Supported user interfaces
 VB6 controls WinForms and WPF WPF
(Note: WinForms is also supported but unlike WPF there is no built-in interface designer for it yet)
  • Supported languages
 VB6 syntax C# and VB.NET C#
(VB.NET support is under development)
Note: Add-Ins developed with other languages or Add-Ins for which you don't have the source code cannot be deployed automatically with this system
  • .NET Framework support
 NO YES YES
  • Extensibility of the macros or the Add-Ins (i.e. ability for end-users to further extend or customize the extensions)
 YES NO YES
Security:
  • Ability to decide who has the right to execute what
 NO PARTIALLY YES
  • Ability for any authorized user in the company to instantly see the source code that corresponds to one of the installed extensions (Add-In or macro)
 YES NO YES
  • Ability for any authorized user in the company to instantly see the Change Log (i.e. history of modifications) of one of the installed extensions (Add-In or macro)
 NO NO YES
  • Ability to require validation before deploying to the whole company
 NO PARTIALLY
(not automated)		 YES