Developers

Omnis Technical Note TNNO0004

OLE Automation Notation

For Omnis Studio 2.0 or above
By Omnis Environment Engineering

I've heard that Omnis Studio supports OLE Automation, but how do I use it?

OLE Automation is fully supported in Omnis Studio 2.0 using a non-visual component, an object that can
be instantiated via an Omnis object variable, and if necessary, without the need for a window or report instance. Automation is described in detail in Chapter 9 of the Omnis Programming manual, available with Omnis Studio 2.0. This tech note accompanies an example library that uses Automation with Microsoft Excel, Word®, and PowerPoint® (the PowerPoint example is available on the Omnis Studio 2.0 CD in the Examples Browser). Download the library; the Word example also requires a sample document. To use this library you'll also need the latest version of the OLE Automation component which
is on the Studio 2.0.1 CD, or Studio 2.0 users should download it here (place it in the XCOMP folder).
Both the library and new component should only be used with Omnis Studio 2.0.

You create an automation object by declaring an Omnis object variable and specifying the appropriate subtype, depending on what is available on your system. When you declare the object variable in the method editor you specify the Type as Object and the Subtype as the type of Automation object you require. To do this click in the Subtype box in the method editor, open the External Objects group in
the Select Object dialog, then open the Automation group and scroll the list of available objects.

In the example library the object variables and code samples are placed in the AutomationCode code class In the PowerPoint'97 method the objPowerPoint object variable has the subtype 'PowerPoint.Application.8'. Having declared your variable you can execute methods and notation against the variable to instantiate and manipulate the object. To instantiate a PowerPoint automation object, you can use the following method, as shown in the example library.

; objPowerPoint is an object variable with
; subtype 'PowerPoint.Application.8'
Do objPowerPoint.$createobject()
; Starts PowerPoint object
Do objPowerPoint.$visible.$assign(kTrue)
; Makes PowerPoint visible
Do objPowerPoint.$presentations Returns objPresentations
; Obtains presentations object
Do objPresentations.$xadd() Returns objPresentation
; Adds a new presentation
; $xadd() is a method of the presentations object
For iPageNum from 1 to 5 step
   ;loop to add multiple slides to presentation
  Do objPresentation.$slides Returns objSlide
  ; Obtains slides object
  Do objSlide.$xadd(iPageNum,1) Returns objCurSlide
  ; Adds a new slide
  ; and so on...
  ; objPresentations, objPresentation, objSlide, and
  ; objCurSlide are all object variables with no subtype

Every Automation object has the $createobject() method together with its own properties and methods which you can use in your code to manipulate the object. You can examine these properties and methods at runtime using the Omnis Interface Manager. To examine the properties and methods of the Powerpoint object you can set a breakpoint immediately after the $createobject() method, run the example from the main window, then in the method editor right-click on the objPowerPoint object variable and select the Interface Manager option from the context menu. The Interface Manager lists the properties and methods for the object, including the parameters and a description for each method. You'll also need to look at the MS-VBA help file for PowerPoint, Word, or Excel for a description of these properties and methods. The easiest way to open the help files is to load the appropriate MS application, load the Visual Basic editor by selecting Tools/Macros/VisualBasic Editor. When the VB editor loads, select the Help from the menu and look for the Visual Basic Reference for that tool. Alternatively, load the appropriate help file direct from your MS Office folder.

In the PowerPoint example step through the code and examine the properties and methods for each object created including the objPresentations, objPresentation, objSlides, and objCurSlide objects. Switch to PowerPoint after each method to see the results. The PowerPoint example creates five slides and specifies the text and style for each. The code examples and methods for all the examples are well commented so it should be clear what is happening in each method.