Deployment / Compiler - supporting excel doc not found after compiling

To whom it may concern,

I'm trying to compile a GUI that I made. This GUI calls an excel file and writes some data to it. The excel file is specifically formatted for my needs and can't be replicated from the mfile. The *.exe will be distributed to people who will not have access to my copy of the excel file. Finally, I don't want people to have access to the original excel file or even be able to see it. In short, I don't want to have to distribute the *.exe along with the *.xls. I only want to have to give them one file, being the *.exe.

The question is, how do I get MATLAB deployment tool to compile and store the *.xls file into the *.exe that is generated.

If this isn't possible, then is it possible to include the files in the MCR installer, so that the supporting files are installed during MCR installation?

Finally, if neither of these things are possible, are there any file types that can be used in this way? The help file states that '...images, data files...' are supported. I assume this means that it is possible to incorporate some files into the *.exe without having to distribute them separately.

Answer 1

[Aurelien Queffurust]

The official answer is in this technical solution : Can I depend on the MATLAB Compiler 4.0 (R14) to protect my intellectual property?

The 2 importants items :

Only the MATLAB files in a deployed application are protected by encryption.

Any data shipped with a deployed application (MAT-files or other data files) is not secured by the MATLAB Compiler. You should expect that users can easily access the content in these files unless you encrypt them yourself.

Answer 2

[Walter Roberson]

Any file that does not require NTFS alternate streams can be replicated from within Matlab: you can always read the file in as a stream of uint8 and emit source code that replicates the array by simply using mat2str() . Then, when the deployed executable is run, it would write the file out and use it.

Including the file in a .MCR might be less work, though.

Note that either way, MCR or buried in source, when your executable is run, people would be able to see the .xls file during execution. There are tools around designed to monitor file access by programs.