ActiveX DLL or EXE?

[softwareguy74]

When creating an ActiveX component, what situations would warrent a ActiveX DLL and what situations would warrent an ActiveX EXE? I'm just trying to understand the difference between the two and when I should use one over the other..

Any help and/or examples would be appreciated..

Dan

dbassett74

In a nutshell an Activex DLL is "in process" and an ActiveX EXE is "out of process".

What this means is your app waits for in process things to finish before continuing, a good example is a database transaction which you need to know either succeeded or failed and you don't want to go on processing until you know the answer.

Out of process means the ActiveX EXE goes off on it's own thread of execution, an example would be generating emails, you just kick off the process, it goes off sending hundreds of emails and in the meantime your app goes on executing and responding to the user.

[tumblingdown]

If the .exe gives to the calling process, then yes, but it doesn't have to.

It is not an inherently asynchronous situation, you have to design it that way.


td.