passing data to a dll

Hi,

We are developing a Active X DLL containing several forms. These forms contain several controls. This application is being developed in vb 6. The active x dll will be called from other applications developed in vb6. When ever an application calls the active x dll, it also has to provide data to the controls of the forms.

We would like to know how do we provide the data to the dll so that the data is displayed in the controls on the forms. We are thinking of 2 possible approaches for passing the data. One is in the form of xml object. we would store the relevant data in xml format and the active x dll would contain code that reads the data from the xml objects and assigns them to the appropriate controls.

Another is in the form of using properties for each control of the form and assigning the data to these properties and in turn the controls are assigned with the values of the properties.

However we are not able to decide which approach is efficient from all aspects. Please provide your inputs/suggestions.

Thanks in advance

I would suggest to use the argument/property way.
using a file can lead to many more (File) errors and is easy to abuse by others.

A way to reduce the time to marshall is using an init function to pass
data: in a ; delimited string as 1 argument, using a variant to pass an array containing the neccesary data, or an object/class using late binding in your dll