How can I connect a C prog with diadem

Question

Hi!
I have written a C program, that converts a ASCII File in format what DIADem can read. But now I would like to integrate this C Program in my  DiaDem VBSscript. How can I do this?
Could you give some advice or where I can find some information. Thanks in advance.
John

Answer 1

Hi John,
I'm not sure what kikiduu has in mind exactly.  VBScript can invoke object variables from external COM objects or ActiveX servers.  So if you build a COM wrapper around the C DLL or in any other way expose the DLL such that a program can invoke an object variable from it, then I agree that this is a valid option.  The VBScript command to invoke an object variable from an external definition is CreateObject().  The other option here is to use the shareware "DynaWrap" to dynamically wrap your DLL, but I hear this does not always work, although it certainly works some of the time.
But really, developing C code to help DIAdem read an ASCII file is serious overkill.  The native way to go about this would be to create a VBScript DataPlugin to read the ASCII file.  Would you be able to post or email ([email protected]) an example of one of these ASCII files for me to take a look at?  If it's a simple enough file, I'll just create a DataPlugin for you.  VBScript DataPlugins offer the ability to describe how the data is stored in the ASCII file, so that the actual file parsing is done in C in the DataPlugin engine.  Performance is therefore rarely a limitation in this approach, and you get superior integration into the DIAdem environment, including automatic DataFinder file indexing, selective and reduced file loading, registered file loading, channel previews in the NAVIGATOR, etc.
Brad Turpin
DIAdem Product Support Engineer
National Instruments