Using VBA to get data through a Terminal Emulator (Like Attachmate Extra!)

[pedroj012]

My company uses OutsideView, which I think is just a terminal emulator, letting us access a database. It's your basic blue screen with white letters. I want to create a macro that takes lists of numbers from excel and then inputs them into the terminal and reads the result back into excel.

At another job they used something similar to OutsideView called Attachmate, or Extra!, and there was a lot of documentation about how to automate that through excel. I can't find anything for OutsideView.

I do have access to OutsideView API documentation, which talks about all the methods available, and gives examples of these methods in .net, vba, and other languages.

In excel (through the menu) I tried to declare a reference to the DLL's associated with OutsideView, but it won't let me do that (Gives an error).

I'm trying to figure out how to use Declare Lib within the macro itself and reference the library, but I'm not sure if that's how I should go about it. Like, can I even use the library?

With Attachmate, you could reference the Extra! Dll directly. I'm worried that not being able to do that means I won't be able to automate like I could with Extra!, but seeing methods in the OutsideView API written in VBA makes me think there has to be a way to make this work.

Like can I just create an OutsideView System object and then start calling methods through it somehow?

I guess I'm feeling a little lost, and clearly I'm not an expert on this. Thanks for any help!

[TMS]

You probably know all this ...

http://support.attachmate.com/techdocs/2787.html

Quote:

Reflection’s COM API (previously known as Automation or OLE Automation) provides a way to control Reflection from other applications, such as Microsoft Office products or a Visual Basic project. You can use this API to send instructions to Reflection and extract host data.

For example, from Microsoft Word or Excel, you can launch a Reflection session, log onto a host, and copy screen data to the current document. In this situation, Reflection is the object (or server) that is being manipulated by Word, which is the controller (or client).

Reflection's COM/Automation support is provided by Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and Reflection's methods and properties. When you want to communicate with Reflection from another application, create a Reflection object and use Reflection's methods and properties in the other application's programming environment.

Short story: you need a VBA API for OutsideView in the same way as AttachMate.

Usually, the installation will provide that API. You just need to reference it in the VB Editor. You should then be able to create objects that use the object model.

Unfortunately, I can't tell you how to do that.

[pedroj012]

Thanks, that was pretty helpful.

One of the links from that site talks about the difference between COM and .Net API's. The API for OutsideView is .Net, which I think means I can't use VBA. Me not being able to set OutsideView DLL's as references from Excel VBA makes me also think that (Can't add it through the GUI, also get an error when trying to do it in the code).

So I think what I need to do is write the code in Visual Basic, which is different from VBA, and is actually .NET. Does this sound right based on what I've said?

[TMS]

So I think what I need to do is write the code in Visual Basic, which is different from VBA, and is actually .NET. Does this sound right based on what I've said?

Sounds right but not something I have any familiarity with.