[Newbies] API: Control Squaek by Excel

Wed Jul 5 17:16:44 UTC 2006

Uwe,

>From your responses:

> 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.

If it were me I would just use XML and UDP, I took a look at Excel and the
UDP setups are pretty simple although there are some limitations (not
knowing what you are working on it's difficult to know how the limitations
will effect you) see: http://www.procdev.com/excelBridge.asp .  It should be
easy enough for you to add the protection you are looking for to secure the
ports.  If you decide to go with multiple clients at a later time then have
a look at SharedQueue.

If you are looking to go with a com object then have a look at:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.joops.com/Sma
llCOMX.htm&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=3&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dsmallcomx
%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26safe%3Doff but it's not free for commercial work.  I
believe there are excel examples included in the download.  This will give
you an activeX connection to excel which is really cool.  There are of
course limitations and security concerns with activeX and you will need a
basic understanding of DLLs and C.  I was very impressed with the software
and how nice it was to work with.  I used SmallcomX with VW not squeak so
I'm not sure about how well it will translate.  It turned out that I
couldn't use the program because of some threading problems with SmallComX,
but that was more the dll I was using then the program, it should work great
for excel.  

I'm not familiar with the .Net to Squeak code so let us know how it works
for you; I saw the .net code here: http://www.saltypickle.com/SqueakDotNet .
When you get the excel com stuff working maybe you could post it for the
community!  Good luck!

Happy coding!

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

> From: Loew Uwe 
> Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 8:40 AM
> 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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