Transferring an MWCellArray from C# to Matlab

Lets just say, for arguments sake, I have MWCellarray temp:

MWCellArray temp = new MWCellArray(10000,11);

And I now wish to call a Matlab function to run some simple calculations upon it:

            MLApp.MLApp matlab = new MLApp.MLApp();
            <THIS IS THE MISSING STEP>
            matlab.Execute("open 'C:\Program Filez\mymatlabcode.m'");
            matlab.Execute("[thisismyoutput] = mymatlabcode(temp)");

I now need to make sure I can pass temp into the matlab workspace first. Obviously my first thought was:

 matlab.PutWorkspaceData("putworkspace", "base", temp);

But no: {"Not implemented (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004001 (E_NOTIMPL))"}

Seemingly I am going to have to turn the MWCellArray into a string array to use that command....

        //{
        //    int[] kDimensions = temp.Dimensions;
        //    string[,] stemp = new string[kDimensions[0], kDimensions[1]];

        //    for (int i = 0; i < kDimensions[0]; i++)
        //    {
        //        for (int j = 0; j < kDimensions[1]; j++)
        //        {
        //            stemp [i, j] = (temp[i + 1, j + 1]).ToString();
        //        }
        //    }
        //}

This is very slow. And the real implementation is around 15 of the MWCellArrays and this conversion is taking 15-20 minutes.

So. How can I do this in a sensible fashion? I cannot see any other methods to enable the transfer. Neither matlab.PutCharArray nor matlab.PutFullMatrix seem to be applicable.

Is there a way to speed up the loop considerably? I am entirely new to c#

Alternatively I would have thought I ought to be able to save an MWCellArray as a .mat file on C drive and then load it? (loading is easy, saving has me stumped)

I would be interested in any insights you can offer. Thanks.

I think you may be confusing two types of interaction between MATLAB and .NET.

1. You can start a live copy of MATLAB as a COM Automation Server using MLApp.MLApp. The resulting object then has methods such as PutCharArray, PutWorkspaceData etc, which would take regular .NET System.Array variables as input; Execute to run a MATLAB command; and GetFullMatrix etc which return regular .NET System.Array variables as output.
2. Using the add-on product MATLAB Builder for .NET, you can deploy MATLAB code to a .NET assembly. You can then call that assembly from .NET, and the functions you deployed are available as methods. These methods take things like MWCellArray, MWNumericArray etc as inputs, and return them as outputs.

You can't mix those two by, for example, passing a MWCellArray to matlab.PutWorkspaceData.

If your aim is to call a live copy of MATLAB, don't create MWCellArray variables - just pass over strings and arrays with PutCharArray and PutFullMatrix, execute stuff, then get the results back with GetCharArray and GetFullMatrix. Here's an example from the MATLAB doc.

If your aim is to call a deployed .NET assembly, then instantiate that and call it (passing MWCellArray etc) rather than MLApp.MLApp. Here's an example from the Builder for .NET doc.