ActiveX controls: possibilities and considerations

The power of ActiveX controls

Surfing the Internet reveals a huge and still increasing number of vendors offering ActiveX controls within many different areas. Instruments, graphs, buttons, knobs, all you can think of - ready to plug into IGSS.

If you have very special needs, it is also getting easier to program the controls because most programming tools like Visual Basic, C/C++, etc. provides lots of assistance for that purpose.

Things to consider before using ActiveX controls

There are, however, also things to consider.

Since it is so easy to make a control, there will be a number of vendors that do not have the same standards for software quality that we are used to in this business. Bringing in such controls will be a risk to the stability of the system because of the high level of integration.
Another obstacle can be the language of the user interface. Most of what is found on the Internet is English and it can be difficult to get it translated.
Licensing should be considered. For some controls you have to pay for each station while others have a runtime concept where you pay for the Definition license.