Conference Report Day 3

The Saturday session was targeted at developers.
Again the day went well and the feedback was very positive.

The first session was on the future of VBA
The session started old-Skool when I demoed recording XLM macros in Excel 5 on Windows 3.11. The XLM life story is probably our best guide to what may happen to VBA. The future of VBA is a concern for many developers, not just from a career point of view but also from a maintainability of current projects POV. We discussed what people thought might be key influencing factors and timescales.

The second session was a led discussion around programmability
We looked at VSTA in Infopath, VSTO in Visual Studio 2008 and discussed how these might impact our projects. We also had a candid discussion about security. This was an extremely useful session for getting a feel for the consensus view on some of these topics. Rather than being a one way ‘I think this’ presentation everyone chipped in with what they thought, what they had seen etc.

The afternoon started off with a look at xlls.
These are the recommended technology for writing Excel add-ins. They have some major benefits over VBA based xla’s (speed mainly), and some significant drawbacks (they are harder to write (well)). I walked through a demo VBA version I had built to explain the concepts and then went though the code of some xlls I have written. I also demoed some of the commercial tools in the area that take away all the C API pain. My performance demo was 266ms for a set of VBA functions down to 13 ms for the xll equivalent. (as a matter of interest the XLM version was 26ms, and whilst a bit more ugly than VBA, its not that much harder to write.)

The second session was a led discussion around data and Excel alternatives
We had a good chat about the ways people are using external data in Excel. And some great insight into some of the issues with certain providers. Essbase got a mention as a couple of us work with it regularly. We also had a look at OpenOffice Calc, and a discussion of where that was at in relation to Excel in enterprises. We also had a chat about Office 2007, with some of the attendees part way through roll-outs or pilots. Almost inevitably we touched on corporate culture, which so often seems to get ignored, but can have a dramatic effect on the work we do and the way we do it.

We also found time to discuss next year and what people would like to see and do.

Finally a few of us retired to the pub to watch the footie, have a drink and eventually go for a (delicious) curry.

Overall an excellent event I reckon, I’m already looking forward to next year. Hope to see you there.
Simon

Conference Report Day 2

Friday: Conference - Advanced, Add-ons - Intermediate.
Again the feedback was very positive all round.
The first session was Andys session on Excel Charting.
Andy took us through a range of different ways to present information on charts. In each case explaining the logic behind it as well as the actual steps to create the chart. Although the demo was on 2003, he explained where Excel 2007 was different.
I learnt a load of stuff in Andys talk last year, and I learnt a load of new stuff this time around.
Next up was my Excel VBA design tips
This covered a range of areas from IDE setup to design, class, named ranges etc. I demoed some of the hard to maintain code I have worked with in the past. The session was a bit of a challenge as I had pretty much lost my voice, but I think I scraped through. (apologies for the squeaking!)
After dinner Charles went through UDF performance
Charles had an example of performance improvement step by step from someone he had helped from a newsgroup posting. Sadly I can’t remember the numbers, but it was big from 20 second to 0.04 or something. He also took us through some of the underlying issues like the VBA call overhead, and ways to minimise that. He had also created several new UDFs to demonstrate how a bit of domain knowledge can enable you to create functions that perform better than Excel native ones. He also discussed some of the issues in creating and deploying professional UDFs.
Last slot of the day was Nick on Data Interchange
Nick took us through some of the many ways of connecting Excel up to external data sources. One of the big features in Office 2007 is Sharepoint integration and Nick demoed some of the ways they use that at his firm. By choosing the right structure in Excel 2007 (which seemed to be tables, tables, tables - now what was the question?) exposing and synchronising data with external sources (eg sharepoint lists) is almost trivial.

The addon classes were Charles on Optimising Calculation speed and Bob on VBA Tips and Techniques.

The day finished with some general questions and answers, mainly about which pub to go to before our planned Chinese meal. (which was excellent btw)

One point worth mentioning was during a couple of sessions I spotted presenters and delegates huddled around laptops in the foyer. There aren’t many opportunities to get such one to one focussed advice from the top folks in the country, this is surely one of the hidden benefits of conferences such as this. We are wondering about formalising this somehow for the 2008 event - any suggestions as to how are welcome.