Information about data exchange formats for OSLO

Question

Synopsis

Symptoms

There are two main ways to exchange data between OSLO and other programs:

Exchanging data files between OSLO and other programs

(Available in all editions of OSLO)

OSLO can work with both ASCII text and binary data files very easily through the interface provided by its flexible programming language: CCL. OSLO can both read and write data files. An added capability of OSLO CCL programming is that a CCL program could be written which runs OSLO remotely. With this added functionality, another program could totally control the operation of OSLO without direct human interaction with the OSLO interface. A typical example of this process could be

1. Start OSLO
2. Load a lens model
3. Read data file #1 that instructs OSLO to perform some complex calculation
4. Write the results of the calculation to data file #2
5. Close OSLO

Understanding the details of how to accomplish this sequence of tasks is straightforward after the user has become acquainted with CCL programming. The ASCII text data file approach is usually preferred because the user has more available tools to view the data file and debug the programming code.

Exchanging data directly & dynamically between OSLO and other programs

(Available in OSLO Premium only)

There is much more specialized programming that needs to be performed in order to exchange data dynamically between OSLO and other programs. Further discussion of this is outlined in the Solution section below.

Solution

The recommended approach for dynamically exchanging data between OSLO and other programs is different depending on which operating system you are using.

IN MS WINDOWS:

Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) is a Windows Application Progam Interface (API) protocol that is used to share information between different programs. OSLO can be set up as either a DDE client or server. This means that you either write programs in OSLO's CCL language to control other programs (OSLO would be the DDE client) or write programs in another program's macro language to control OSLO (OSLO would be the DDE server). Note that the other program involved would also have to support the alternate DDE protocol.

Information about how to implement DDE functionality is covered in the OSLO on-line help. Under the ""Contents"" tab, go to ""Contents>>Programming>>Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE)"". Note that the DDE sub-topic help pages offer programming examples of DDE client and server implementation.

IN LINUX:

Sockets are the Application Progam Interface (API) protocol that is used to share information between different programs across the internet. Sockets have also been implemented in Linux and OSLO takes advantage of sockets to implement the dynamic exchange of data between other Linux programs. A description of the details required to implement the sockets protocol in OSLO/Linux is described in the accompanying file: "OSLO Sockets Interface" (Adobe PDF format), which is available for download below. "