Problem:
A new problem has came up regarding the Fedex shipping integration. I have made my solution depend on a COM DLL file, that has to be registered by administrator on any computer that runs the Access file VBA macro. That means, for multiple users the administrator has to install this as an update (copy DLL files, make sure user has NET framework 4 installed, run registration script, update Access file). The old version of the software is actually no better - it requires the Fedex Ship Manager API to be installed on user's computer, presumably by an admin too. But, we want to make it easier and skip the admin installation part altogether - just put the program files on the server, let user copy them to local computer and use with no installation by admin.
This would in fact be possible if I had succeeded in making VBA call webservice directly, using VBA import web service tool. But, I'd rather not go back to it because working with variants is very painful.
What I want to investigate are the registration-free COM objects. Also, somehow the old code uses DLL libraries with no reference to them in the VB Editor References window, by simply Declare and CreateObject calls. Finally, I've been using wsdl files, but Fedex also alternatively provides XML (.xsd) files.
A new problem has came up regarding the Fedex shipping integration. I have made my solution depend on a COM DLL file, that has to be registered by administrator on any computer that runs the Access file VBA macro. That means, for multiple users the administrator has to install this as an update (copy DLL files, make sure user has NET framework 4 installed, run registration script, update Access file). The old version of the software is actually no better - it requires the Fedex Ship Manager API to be installed on user's computer, presumably by an admin too. But, we want to make it easier and skip the admin installation part altogether - just put the program files on the server, let user copy them to local computer and use with no installation by admin.
This would in fact be possible if I had succeeded in making VBA call webservice directly, using VBA import web service tool. But, I'd rather not go back to it because working with variants is very painful.
What I want to investigate are the registration-free COM objects. Also, somehow the old code uses DLL libraries with no reference to them in the VB Editor References window, by simply Declare and CreateObject calls. Finally, I've been using wsdl files, but Fedex also alternatively provides XML (.xsd) files.
Well, it appears the RegFree dll's can't be used from VBA code. There are two workarounds: ActCtx object, which itself needs to be installed by admin on user's computer, or creating manifest file for msaccess/excel and placing them in protected Windows directory -- which again is useless.
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