Accessing ActiveX Objects

To access exposed objects, you can create ActiveX clients using Visual Basic, Microsoft® Visual C++®, Microsoft Excel, and other applications and programming languages that support the Automation technology. This chapter discusses several strategies for accessing exposed objects.

• Creating scripts with Visual Basic
• Creating controllers that manipulate objects
• Creating type information browsers

Regardless of your strategy, an ActiveX client needs to follow these steps:

    To initialize and create the object

1. Initialize OLE.
2. Create an instance of the exposed object.

    To manipulate methods and properties

1. Get information about the object's methods and properties.
2. Invoke the methods and properties.

    To release OLE when the application or programming tool terminates

1. Revoke the active object.
2. Uninitialize OLE.

Note Throughout this chapter, the file names of sample applications appear in parentheses before the sample code.