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DDE and COM in Visual BasicDDE in Visual Basic The native implementation of DDE in Visual Basic is poor in terms of capability, speed and bugs. DDE is not supported in VB.NET. (Also Known As VB.NOT because it is completely different from VB6.) When VB is acting either as server or client:
In addition, on the client side:
In addition, on the server side:
The solution to all these problems is to use our DDClient and DDServer controls. You can work asynchronously using Events, it allows the server to send data as fast as it wants and there are no built in limitations. However, even using DDClient messages will be missed if a MsgBox dialog is on display, because it causes all events to be ignored. The answer is to use the MessageBox API call instead. Details of how to do this can be found on the DDClient support page. You can download DDClient and DDServer from the the DDE download area. Sample native DDE server and client projects are also available from the download area. COM in Visual Basic Visual Basic is good for programming clients and servers when the client creates an instance of a server object or application. It has poor support for programming a client or server when the server must run continuously. On the client side, GetObject() only works in limited circumstances. It cannot work at all with applications such as Internet Explorer which do not register themselves in the Running Object Table (ROT). We have not been able to make it work properly without a file name. Even when it succeeds with a file name it connects to a random instance of the server, when there is more than one. A typical continuously running server is monitoring hardware or other applications and does not use file names in the required way. An alternative mechanism is to set a reference to the ActiveX EXE server. The Global MultiUse classes can be accessed by the client. Windows will start the server if necessary. The disadvantage of this method is that the client must be recompiled every time the server is changed. Supplying a drop-in server replacement does not seem to be possible. On the server side, a continuously running server cannot be programmed at all except by an horrendous hack. It is necessary to construct a vtable interface as an array of Longs and write the QueryInterface, AddRef, Release and other interface code in longhand Visual Basic. The Windows API is used to register the interface in the Running Object Table and remove it when the server closes. The method was described by Matthew Curland in the August 1997 issue of the Visual Basic Programmer's Journal, page 109. There is a much more extensive treatment of the topic in chapter 10 of his book Advanced Visual Basic 6, ISBN 0-201-70712-8. The book includes the code, which is also on the companion CDROM. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page DDE and Visual Basic.NETVB.NET has no native support for DDE. You will have to use the API, or alternatively components such as our DDClient and DDServer controls. COM controls do not work properly in the Beta 1 release of VB.NET. Events do not reach the application. Vtable calls are not supported, although this does not affect DDServer and DDClient. We are assured on the .NET newsgroups that these problems will be fixed in the Beta 2 release. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page How the Windows Shell uses DDEThe Windows Shell uses DDE and the registry to implement the mechanism whereby files with a particular extension are associated with a group of Action Verbs. The Shell uses the information in the registry to construct a command line for the associated application, and optionally to specify a DDE Execute command to send to it. The application is launched with the command line only if the attempt to send a DDE command fails. The full details of the rules and registry entries are on the File Association Editor page. If more than one file is to be opened with a running instance of an application, the Shell starts a new DDE conversation for each one. All the conversations are left open until the final Execute command has been sent, at which point all the conversations are closed. This is a rather time-consuming way of doing things, but it does enable the application to determine whether all the file names have been sent. The application must count the number of conversations still open, and process the list of files when it falls to zero. Supplying a command line is a simple task for which COM is obviously far too cumbersome. But the Shell does more than that with DDE. You can create, modify and delete program groups and their Shortcuts with a DDE interface which is almost unchanged from 16-bit Windows. The link to the specification on MSDN is at How to get further information. The 32 bit Shell has a COM interface called IShellLink for maintaining Icons and Program Groups. You can use this as an alternative to DDE, but less and simpler code is required using DDE. Even Microsoft has to admit this, if you search MSDN you will find an article entitled "IShellLink-Shortcuts the Long Way" (it concerns shortcuts in the context of Visual Basic). However, 32-bit Shortcuts can be used for purposes other than launching files, for example they can refer to Control Panel items and other types of Shell object. DDE can only be used to manipulate the top level program groups, not groups within groups. If you want to do any of these things you must use IShellLink. A difference in the DDE interface between 16 and 32-bit Windows is detailed in Knowledgebase article Q99456 Win32 Shell Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) Interface. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page Cannot find the file.... (or one of its components)...
One possible reason for this message box is that the Windows shell has not been able to establish a DDE conversation according to the specification in the Registry. If this is so, you can edit the file association for the offending verb using the View...Options... dialog of Windows Explorer, File Types tab. It possible that the Application or Topic name is wrong, but more likely you need to uncheck "Use DDE". Alternatively, you can use the File Association Editor, a free download from this web site. A likely cause of the error, if DDE related, is that another application has modified the entry for files with an extension such as .txt. Notepad does not understand DDE. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page Web browser DDEAs we have pointed out in the article When is DDE more suitable?, DDE is the ideal way of monitoring the activity of another application. Both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator implement a DDE interface for this purpose. You can download our freeware WebSpy Visual Basic program which uses it. Netscape Navigator 4 Implements the Spyglass specification. Scroll down for a section on Netscape6. Internet Explorer Implements a subset of the Spyglass specification. One of the most commonly asked questions is how to open a document in a new window instead of reusing an old one. One way of doing it is to start a new instance of IE. Two factors affect whether a window in an existing instance is reused:
The fourth parameter 0 does not have any effect, according to
Q160957. In the file
association for HTML types the DDE command is by default The differences between the Internet Explorer DDE interface and the Spyglass specification are detailed in the following Microsoft Knowledgebase articles:
Q160957
DDE Support in Internet Explorer Versions There are other differences, not mentioned in any Microsoft article we are aware of. The following table summarizes them.
Netscape 6 Beta releases The Netscape 6 Beta DDE interface is non-standard and reduced to a single feature, opening a web page. Connect to service Netscape6 and Topic WWW_OpenURL then issue an Execute command, a request no longer works. The command string must be of the form "Full path to netscape6" "The URL required"including the quotes. It always opens the new URL in a new window. Netscape 6 non-Beta The Netscape 6 non-Beta DDE interface seems to be reduced to absolutely nothing. It is possible to connect to service Netscape6 and Topic WWW_OpenURL, but Execute commands do nothing (although they do not fail), and requests fail. Opera 5 Opera commits a stupid and unforgivable sin. In addition to responding to the service name "Opera", it also responds to "IExplore" and "Netscape". What this means is that a program trying to connect to Netscape or Internet Explorer is likely to be connected to Opera instead. Opening a URL is the only DDE operation that seems to work. Opera does not even implement the reduced functionality of Internet Explorer relative to the Spyglass specification. It accepts a conversation on the topic WWW_RegisterURLEcho, but then refuses the Poke required to specify the service name for notifications. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page Controlling Excel with DDEExcel is controlled by using it as a DDE server. Excel is a client only when a cell or range has a formula which uses DDE to get the cell contents. DDE allows you to handle multiple instances of Excel, something which is not possible using automation. Each instance offers the "System" topic. The other topics are of the form "[Workbook]Sheet", one for each open workbook regardless of the Excel instance hosting it. The workbook name is the filename of the opened file, if there is one. The filename without square brackets is also available as a topic. All DDE Service, Topic and Item names are insensitive to case. The DDE Execute command strings are also case insensitive. If you request "SysItems" on the System topic, you get a list of items available on that topic:
The format CF_TEXT must be used for all requests on the System topic. To manipulate single cells or ranges, use DDE Request and Poke commands on the [Workbook]Sheet topics. The DDE item is the cell name (e.g. r1c1) or range (e.g. r1c1:r10c2). Single cell data is straightforward. To read the data in a cell, issue a request for the data with the item name being the cell address, such as r1c1. You can also start an advise loop for the cell, known as a hot link. Excel sends the cell contents to the client whenever it changes. To modify the data in a cell, issue a poke transaction with the item name being the cell address as in a request. There are several ways to populate or read a range, when the target is an array of cells.
You cannot poke or request any part of the active selection if it is being edited in Excel. Built-in macros can be run on any topic with a DDE Execute command. The command string is the macro enclosed in square brackets, for example [Select("r1c1:r2c2")]. Commands can be concatenated, for example [ALERT("Hello world")][ALERT("Hello again")]. To get help on the macros, download macrofun.exe or macro97.exe from the Microsoft web site from these Knowledgebase articles Q143466 for macro97.exe and Q128185 for macrofun.exe. To run macros you have written, use the RUN macro like this: [RUN("MyMacro")]. Your macros cannot have parameters. You can write macros to set variables, then execute other macros which examine the variables you have assigned. In the DDE Software download area there are sample programs (with full source) which manipulate Microsoft Excel using DDE. The compiled C program is only 17kb, and it does not rely on any external DLLs (apart from the Common Controls which is for the User Interface, not DDE). Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page Controlling Microsoft Word with DDEThe Word DDE interface is similar to that of Excel, with a System topic and a topic for each open file. You cannot connect to the topic of a new document until it has been saved to a file, then it has a topic which is the file name. The commands to send in [] brackets are Word Basic commands. These are the macro commands of Word 7 (Word for Windows 95). If you run Word 7 you can discover the built-in macro commands by recording one of your own. In Word 97 Word Basic is replaced by VBA and the Word Object Model. The macros you record use object model commands which cannot be run using DDE. Execute commands sent by DDE must still be the old Word Basic ones. The implementation is that a temporary macro called TmpDDE is created using the old macros as elements of the WordBasic object. For example, "CharLeft 1" becomes "WordBasic.CharLeft 1" Until recently Microsoft had a Word Basic help file installation program on the web site, but it seems to have gone. You can download the file from the Angelfire server only: click to download wrdbasic.exe. Some of the commands, with no explanation, are in the help file installer Position.exe, which can be downloaded from the Microsoft web site by going to Knowledgebase article Q112733. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page Why does Excel crash when I link a cell to a DDE server?When you put a DDE formula in a cell, Excel asks the server for a number of data formats, starting with XLTable. It crashes if the server does not respond in a timely manner, presumably because it is not prepared for the delayed response. The server must therefore immediately reject any data format it cannot supply. Excel eventually asks for CF_TEXT, the least complex clipboard format it uses. Excel sets up a hot link (advise loop) with the DDE server. It uses the fAckReq flag to stop more data being sent until the last has been acknowledged, which makes sense for a spreadsheet. There is information about fAckReq in the topic The missing data and unreliability problems. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page Obtaining data from Reuter's IDNDDEThe topic DDE and COM in Visual Basic explains why Visual Basic can loose updates from Reuter's IDNDDE. Some improvement can be obtained by instructing IDNDDE to ignore the request to wait for acknowledgement of data receipt and to send new data regardless. In the file IDNDDE.INI there is a section for each application which uses it. If you add the line NOREQACK=1 to the relevant section IDNDDE does not wait for acknowledgements from that application. Deliberately disobeying the correct DDE message protocol is not a good idea. The best solution is to use our DDClient control, which you can download from the the DDE download area. DDClient does it properly, it does not ask the server to wait for acknowledgment. There is another problem with IDNDDE which DDClient also solves. IDNDDE may send data on an advise loop before it has sent an acknowledgement to the client ccepting the request. The client is not expecting data at that point so does not acknowledge it, stopping IDNDDE from sending any more data. DDClient has a mechanism for handling this early advise data. Application DDE interface topics General DDE FAQ topics DDE Software downloads Home page |
