vishnu bobade

• Sep 8th, 2005

 

The simplest explaination is that ActiveX EXE and DLL files include a special interface called IUnknown. This provides a way for the operating system to allow other programs to talk to them directly without spcifically building the connections needed into the program that talks to them. In other words, ActiveX provides a swiss army knife of connections that will let any program use an EXE or DLL, as long as the tool actually exists in the EXE or DLL you try to talk to. 

Deepak Advani

• Sep 25th, 2005

 

Now about the difference, well for one, the former (activex exe) allows u to create an "out of process" activex  server while the later creates "in process" activeX server.

The former is comparatively slower than the later since the former actually involves communication between two processes which, in best case, will reside on the same machine and in worst case on different machines. Please not the best case and the worst case is based on performance and not on requirements.

Needless to say that the former has an extra bagage when it comes to testing and debugging. 

Shilpa Kuber

• Apr 29th, 2006

 

Dlls are in-process components. They run in the same memory as the calling application and hance are faster. Dlls are preferred if they exist on the same machine.

Exes are out-process components. They run in a separate memory location.When a method/function is called from an exe, the parameters and also the result of the method/function have to cross the network boundries through marshalling and hence are slower.For remote access Exes are the choice.

 

pravin shah

• May 10th, 2006

 

In Activex DLL and Activex EXE you build classes, so the application can use it to do something. So both are almost exactly same in the way they are built and used. The difference is as follows

Activex DLL
It runs within the main program address space. So calling method is fast. It is easy to test.

Activex EXE
This runs in a in a separate process. this is useful for creating components that can  run as stand-alone, that is they can be run by clicking on the icon. This is similar to Excel: you can click on the Excel icon and launch Excel or you can create an Excel object from VB.

 

pratap557

 Profile Answers by pratap557 

• May 18th, 2010

 

ActiveX exe can run independently, while ActiveX dll cannot.
ActiveX code runs in separate process while ActiveX Dll code is run into calling program's address space.
ActiveX dll is class/class library.
ActiveX exe may be a COM component/application.