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OLE Automation |
Chapter 11 |
OLE (Object Linking and Embedding) is a Microsoft Windows standard for communications between applications. BlueZone can be linked to Windows applications like Microsoft Word and Microsoft Excel that support OLE.
In addition, BlueZone Host Automation Object can be used as a language-independent programmatic interface to BlueZone.
Using OLE, it is possible to use link Word to BlueZone in support of a "mail merge" application where the names and addresses are stored on a Mainframe and the text of the form letters are stored and formatted in Word. You could link Word to BlueZone and "pull" the names and addresses into Word from the Mainframe via the OLE interface.
The BlueZone Host Automation Object is a Component Object Model (COM) software component for 32-bit Windows platforms. BlueZone Host Automation Object is essentially a programmatic interface to BlueZone.
BlueZone Host Automation Object can be utilized by any COM container application like Visual Basic, Microsoft Excel, and Microsoft Word to enable communications between PCs running BlueZone Display emulation software products and IBM mainframe and iSeries systems as well as other ASCII hosts. With BlueZone Host Automation Object, applications can execute common tasks on various host systems, automate user input, obtain data from host systems, initiate file transfers, and more.
The BlueZone Host Automation Object is a language-independent software component. Programs written in Visual Basic®, Pascal, C, C++, etc. can invoke the BlueZone Host Automation Object to communicate with the host system. In addition, the BlueZone Host Automation Object can be incorporated into many popular word processing, database and spreadsheet macros, and run by any ActiveX scripting engine, including the BlueZone Scripting Host.
The BlueZone Host Automation Object utilizes capabilities of BlueZone's File Mapping (Shared Memory), DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange) and HLLAPI (High-Level Language API) interfaces. In addition to the container’s properties and methods, the BlueZone Host Automation Object adds objects, properties and methods that enable interaction with the BlueZone session and the host system.
Easier to implement than HLLAPI or DDE and provides greater functionality.
Allows easy integration with any COM compliant application.
Programming language independent.
BlueZone Host Automation Object is a development tool that requires familiarity with programming to implement.
The following is an example of a VBScript that loads BlueZone Host Automation Object:
Illustration 11-1
The following is an example of the BlueZone Host Automation Object Loaded in a MS Excel VBA Macro:
Illustration 11-2
SEE BlueZone
Script Host & Debugger Help for help with the BlueZone
Host Automation Object.
Click here to Launch BlueZone Script Host & Debugger Help from the Seagull Software Web Site.
Using OLE/DDE to Link BlueZone to other Applications