Subject: From: Date:

Re: RE: RE: [ECS] MS Outlook and ECS Ingo Pakleppa Wed, 06 Dec 2000 01:44:30 -0800

---

 Wed, 06 Dec 2000 01:44:30 -0800
Part of the problem, too, is that Microsoft essentially doesn't support DDE 
any more. Well, they still do for legacy code, but they want all new code 
to use OLE Automation, and few programs today are still written for DDE. I 
would be extremely surprised if Outlook supported anything like DDE. What 
you can possibly do is download Windows Scripting Host from Microsoft's 
site (I think it actually comes with IE). Be aware that WSH introduces 
security issues in your computer, so if you are concerned about the Melissa 
virus or the like, you may not want to do that.

WSH can control pretty much any OLE Automation server. So all you'd need is 
an interface from WSH to ECS' DDE interface.

Ingo

At 02:08 PM 12/5/2000 -0600, Scott Danks wrote:
>Ahhh,  Well there is a lot of magic in the dde/obdc thing I dont 
>understand.  I just thought if we had a lower level to allow ECS to query 
>other applications, we could get info from these other app's and ECS could 
>act on it.
>
> >>> "David Kindred" <david@retroscape.com> 12/05 2:07 PM >>>
>Scott,
>
>Mark's DDE connection to ECS lets you monitor and set the states of
>individual items within ECS. It's not really a way for other off-the-shelf
>programs to interact with it. You'd have to write something quite specific
>to communicate with ECS (like ACE). If you want to get information from,
>say, Outlook to ECS. You'd have to have a "middle man" program to act as the
>go between, I believe.
>
>ODBC stands for "Open Database Connectivity" and is kind of a generic way to
>access database information, regardless of the actual database engine being
>used. Again, if you'd want to integrate an ODBC compliant database, you'd
>have to write a utility to interact with it and ECS.
>
>--David
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Scott Danks [mailto:sdanks@ci.tulsa.ok.us]
>Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2000 10:47 AM
>To: ecs-list@netbloc.com
>Subject: Re: RE: [ECS] MS Outlook and ECS
>
>
>I have a question for some of you programming guru's out there.  I see
>several programs that could interact with ECS, that would give us expanded
>abilities.  Am I right in thinking that we could communicate with other
>programs if we had an DDE connection to ECS?  I know there is one that Mark
>has made that allows the ability to check status inside ECS ¯ but would it
>be a good idea to see if we can let ECS be a client also?  Would this allow
>us to integrate information from outlook, access, sql server, excel, etc?
>Or am I thinking of OBDC?  Would that be a useful option?
>
>Just some thoughts here.

---