“Online help for VCBASIC blows”.  That was one of our OutsideView user’s comments about its macro automation language.   As any company knows, those are not the kind of things you like to hear from your customer – frustration in trying to use your product.

To be fair, Visual CommBasic (VCBasic) is similar to Visual Basic with the exception that VCBasic has a handful of extra functions and statements that are not in VB.  There are copious amount of documentation out there in the Internet for VB. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for the VCBasic specific functions and statements when you perform a Google search.  If you already know VB then you could be up to speed writing your own Macros in no time.  However for users that are not familiar with VB, it can take longer to figure out how things work and to create a macro. Furthermore, the VCBasic macro editor with its limited capabilities and debugger is pretty dated and thus not the greatest tool out there to write code in this day and age.

With this in mind, we leveraged the .NET framework and integrated into OutsideView the new OVDotNetApi dll module.  This .NET application interface component allows users to use their Visual Studio IDE to create their OutsideView Macros using their preferred programming language supported by Visual Studio.  We believe that this enhancement provides a quantum leap forward in OutsideView’s automation capabilities.  The new interface still supports all the screen interaction commands available with our VCBasic language.  The bonus here is that all the API calls and properties are viewable through Visual Studio’s IntelliSense feature and it is easier to debug your code! Unlike programming with VCBasic, you do not have to implement everything in fine detail anymore. The rich libraries in the .NET environment now allow you to do more with less code.  In addition to supporting the existing VCBasic screen interaction commands, we have also added new useful event types and run time properties that simplify your interactions with OutsideView. You can now register event handlers such as:

• Host connection status

• Keyboard lock/unlock

• User keyboard action keys

• Screen format change

• Inbound data handling

• Event filtering timeout

The new runtime properties enable quick access of terminal emulator information such as:

• Current screen text

• Data Fields (Formatted screens)

• Input Fields (Formatted screens)

• Session state

• Screen size

• Screen mode

• Keyboard state

• Active emulation type

• Screen/Application context

A .NET developer can simply drag the Outsideview.NET component onto their design surface, set some properties, wire up some events and easily mimic a user that reacts at break neck speed! New much more powerful solutions can be developed rapidly in the .NET environment!

Would you like more information about using  .NET Tools for OutsideView? Contact our Senior Software Engineer, Mike Chan at mikec@crystalpoint.com.