AW: [Newbies] API: Control Squaek by Excel

[Loew Uwe (DS/EES1)]

Hi Ron,

Thank you very much for your response. But i just wanted to know if there is a standardized way for Squeak programming language to expose classes / methods in an API-way (like COM or CORBA), so that i'm able to use these exposed classes / methods from another program. I know now that there is a bridge for .NET and Squeak, that might be a solution.

Regarding to your questions:
Will excel be talking to Smalltalk on the same machine?   - may be.
Will excel need to retrieve a response (is the communication two-way)? - Yes and it should be a synchron communication.
What are the performance requirements of your system?  - 1/100 second is the maximum.
Will there be more then one client talking to Smalltalk at the same time?  - at this time not.
Is there a database involved between excel and Smalltalk (which could be the source of your communication also)?	- No.

Regarding your file or database communication i have to say, that i would not prefer this solution, because it's not safe enough. Somebody could influence the communcation in a very easy way. The second thing is, that if you want to use this communication via network, you have to share folders. 


Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Best regards
Uwe Löw
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tel.: +49 711 811-45743   Fax: +49 711 811-31800   uwe.loew at de.bosch.com


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: beginners-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org [mailto:beginners-bounces at lists.squeakfoundation.org] Im Auftrag von Ron Teitelbaum
Gesendet: Montag, 3. Juli 2006 17:03
An: 'A friendly place to get answers to even the most basic questionsabout Squeak.'
Betreff: RE: [Newbies] API: Control Squaek by Excel

Hi Uwe,

There are a number of ways that you can use to communicate with either Excel
to Smalltalk or Smalltalk to Excel.  The issue is really out of the huge
number of options which one do you want to try?

The best thing to do is to decide which things are important to you.  Here
are some things to consider:

Will excel be talking to Smalltalk on the same machine?
Will excel need to retrieve a response (is the communication two-way)?
What are the performance requirements of your system?  Does the conversation
need to be sub-second or will minutes be ok?
Will there be more then one client talking to Smalltalk at the same time?
Is there a database involved between excel and Smalltalk (which could be the
source of your communication also)?

As an example of a really easy communication protocol you could simply
define a text structure (say xml and then you could use SAX or DOM... :).
Then on a Smalltalk instance you could have a separate process that polls
for a text file to appear and then reads in the contents.  Now all you have
to do is get excel to write a file into a location that Smalltalk can read,
which is easy to do. 

If you answer some of the questions maybe I can help more.

Happy coding!

Ron Teitelbaum
President / Principal Software Engineer
US Medical Record Specialists
Ron at USMedRec.com 


>From: Loew Uwe 
>Sent: Monday, July 03, 2006 5:30 AM
>Hello community,
 
>Is it possible, to call a method of a Squeak class by another windows
>programm, e.g. Excel, via an API interface?
 
>Thank you very much.
 
>Best regards
>Uwe Loew
>Testsystems


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