Initiating a conversation
- Last Updated: March 30, 2020
- 1 minute read
- OpenEdge
- Version 12.2
- Documentation
Initiating a conversation
After defining the DDE frame, invoke the DDE INITIATE statement
for the frame, server name, and an available server topic. Most
server applications provide a System topic that is available at startup.
The data items for this topic generally include application command strings
and other information to support DDE interactions with the application. In
ABL, you can use this System topic to make other topics available
to the client using the DDE EXECUTE statement.
After you have made these topics available, you can open additional
conversations for them.
The DDE INITIATE statement retrieves a channel number
that uniquely identifies the conversation. You use this channel
number with other DDE statements to invoke all other exchanges in
the conversation.
For example, the following code fragment opens a conversation
with Microsoft Excel's System topic, returning the channel number
to sys. It uses the sys conversation
to invoke the Excel NEW command, creating an initial
Excel worksheet (Sheet1). It then opens a conversation with the
Sheet1 topic, returning the channel number to sheet, as shown:
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