Quote from gmst:
I wanted to say that I had never heard about RTD before. Only after reading this thread I googled and landed on that wilmott thread.
I will like a deeper discussion on merits of RTD vs DDE. I will try to set up sheets using both technologies, compare and then post my findings over here. What exactly do you mean when you say - prefer the ability to reference dynamic cells?
With DDE you must hard-code any input in the formula's syntax, you cannot reference a cell. Meaning if I wish to pull an item into my spreadsheet, the input must be fixed. For example, if I want to quote the last traded price of AAPL, the function must reference that ticker specifically. Now, let's say I want to change that quote to GOOG, my function will not change to reference the new input. Thus, the need to pull in large volumes of data. With RTD you can reference cells, and change them at will. Now, there are workarounds such as VBA codes, concatenating cells, third party software, etc., but why bother. Also, DDE's performance will suffer once you start pulling large amounts of data.