Monday, May 16, 2005

Data Port ActiveX

I finally managed to write an ActiveX component for the Data Port Component. Instead of using a rocket-science C++ approach, I turned to the venerable Visual Basic 6 to do the job for me. The result of this work is now available online and is made out of two parts. First, you need to download the newest version of dplib.dll (Zip 1.45 MB). You get both the release and debug versions as well as the debug symbols and the map file. Second, you need to download the Vb6DataPort project (Zip 293 KB) that includes both the ActiveX project (DataPortX) and the consuming application with the same name as the Zip file.

This project shows how the Data Port Component must be used from VB6 and uses new code (the dplib.dll is now on version 1.1.25) that is not yet compatible with the published C# wrapper. The C# wrapper will be updated to comply with the changes and will also be published with the source code (it's a very thin wrapper, really).

To make things work reliably, you should put the dplib.dll in the search path or you risk getting a run-time error from VB...

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