[AccessD] Creating Managed Add-ins for Access 2007

BTW, did you ever try to use Registration-Free COM
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/04/RegFreeCOM/), which William
mentioned here some time ago?

Yup it works calling a VB.Net wrapped com class dll from Access
However the download from the article is missing  a comclass.zip
It is only 2 or 3 K, you need this to build any new classes. It is
installed by Visual Studio but not VB Express. I don't have Visual
Studio  but found it in a .msi file downloadable from this simlar article by
same author below. Just install it in the directory indicated in the 
article then
it will appear in temporary templates in vb.Net IDE. It contains
the COM Class template necessary for building new class projects.
I suppose you could workaround it with your own GUID's but don't
know the pitfuls.

Visual Basic Fusion: Best Practices to Use Visual Basic 6 and Visual
Basic .NET Together

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/vbbestprac.asp

 You may have a  problem in the registering of the dll.

Two ways to do this

Install the project and open it in VB.Net, then do a Build this will
register the dll with the com registry. There are step by step
instuctions except for doing the final build in the first article. The 
build will
also create a new tlb file and register the assembly in the GAC and 
register
the dll. There are also standalone routines to do this too.

To use Access set a reference to the tlb file that will be in a
directory like below depending on where you installed the project. C:\Access
files\VBFusion\VB2005\FX20Wrapper\bin\Release\FX20Wrapper.tlb
The tlb will allow Access to see the class definitions and do a compile.

Then just run your routine.

The other way is to use the included  install.bat to register the dll It
uses regasm and gacutil to remove any previously named dll and reinstall
in the registry. Haven't tried this method. See

http://samples.gotdotnet.com/quickstart/howto/doc/Interop/Building_Samples_COM2NET.aspx

install batch file looks like this

regasm 
"C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727\system.windows.forms.dll"

gacutil -u FX20Wrapper
regasm /u "VB2005\FX20Wrapper\bin\Release\FX20Wrapper.dll"

regasm /tlb "VB2005\FX20Wrapper\bin\Release\FX20Wrapper.dll"
gacutil -i "VB2005\FX20Wrapper\bin\Release\FX20Wrapper.dll"


Shamil Salakhetdinov wrote:

>Yes, Marty, it should be doable just using VB 2005 Express.
>
><<<
>installing with GPAC's instead of a created msi from a wizard.
>  
>
>Yes, should be doable - but also .NET Framework SDK is needed I think to
>extract type library from shared add-in's assembly using TlbExp.exe utility,
>which is delivered in SDK or is tlbexp.exe also delivered in .NET Framework
>itself?...
>
>BTW, did you ever try to use Registration-Free COM
>(http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/04/RegFreeCOM/), which William
>mentioned here some time ago?
>
>If that works OK then a Shared/COM Add-in can be probably installed using
>xcopy given:
>
>- its assembly and related files;
>- its typelib;
>- its manifest file for RegFree COM (open question here is how(/what is its
>format) to make it?)...
>
>That would be great if it would work this way - it still might need to set
>several registry entries to "inform" MS Access about presence of com-add-in
>to load but this should be as easy as running once a .reg file with needed
>registry entries...
>
>--
>Shamil
> 
>-----Original Message-----
>From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
>[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of MartyConnelly
>Sent: Thursday, November 02, 2006 11:43 PM
>To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
>Subject: [AccessD] Creating Managed Add-ins for Access 2007
>
>Interesting article from Ken Getz
>Creating Managed Add-ins for Access 2007 
>http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa902693.aspx
>
>You can probably do this without installing Visual Studio Tools
>and just VB 2005 express but it might require filching
>the Shared Add-in template class and installing with GPAC's
>instead of a created msi from a wizard.
>
>  
>

-- 
Marty Connelly
Victoria, B.C.
Canada