[IronPython] basic questions

[Szymon Kobalczyk]

jai hanuman napisał(a):
> i'm trying to incorporate scripting to a windows app. i'm trying to find out 
> the pros and cons of Ironpython, VSA, and VSTA. can someone provide me some 
> pointers when to use which?
> regards
>   
Hello,

In the past I was using VSA for scripting. It gives you access to 
JScript and VBScript languages for .NET. At first glance it all looks 
really nice but the main problem is that these scripts get compiled to 
IL and allocate memory. So if your scripts change often or you have many 
small scripts (more like rule or expression evaluator) this won't work.

Now Microsoft released VSTA as a replacement, but this system targets 
totally different scenarios. It is intended to enable macro recording 
and plugin extensibility in your application similar to VBA mechanisms 
found in Office. And this is even more heavyweight than VSA as you need 
first to create and register the object model four your application, 
VSTA has separate redistributable package and the "dynamic" code is 
compiled from C# or VB.NET.

So currently we are using IronPython witch has proved most flexible and 
lightweight. We use it as expression and rule evaluator for our workflow 
engine and in templates for document generator (I should blog on this 
shortly).

I think I should carefully evaluate this tools (and maybe others) and 
choose one that best fits your scenarios.

Regards,
Szymon Kobalczyk.