Differences Between Visual Basic, VBA, and VBScript for DIAdem Scripting

Issue Details

What are the differences among Visual Basic, VBA, and VBScript?

Solution

Visual Basic is a development tool for the production of code components such as executable programs, COM components*, or ActiveX controls. It is a complete development environment, comparable to Visual C++. 

VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) offers the same high performance tools as Visual Basic used within one Microsoft application to interact with another Microsoft application. VBA was initially an alternate programming choice for DIAdem (as opposed to VBScript). However, there were two substantial advantages to using VBScript over VBA:

1. VBA was unnecessarily complex for the scripting tasks required. 
2. Licensing costs for VBA were significantly higher.

For these reasons, DIAdem standardized on VBScript. 

VBScript is a "light-weight" sub-set of Visual Basic. DIAdem has the ability to develop and debug VBScripts through tools from Microsoft and an interface created by National Instruments.
 

Additional Information

* COM (Component Object Model) refers to a binary standard for independent and compatible software objects, so that the functions are available to a variety of different applications.