jBASE OBjEX OverviewjBASE OBjEX OverviewThe majority of computer systems nowadays are connected to some kind of network, which enables that machine to "talk" in some kind of way to another machine. The amount of "talking" possible between the two machines depends on either proprietary mechanisms, whereby the two systems specifically know how to talk to each other, or by standard mechanisms, defacto or otherwise, whereby any machine should be able to talk to another using the "standard" component.
However even when data can be transferred between systems being able to exchange data between applications can still be a problem. One of the primary reasons behind jBASE OBjEX was to be enable data from Multivalued applications to be provided directly to common desktop applications like Excel and Word or any application coded in Visual Basic or Delphi.
The jBASE OBjEX interface is provided via an additional dynamic linked library, OBjEX.dll, and a type library, OBjEX.tlb. The OBjEX interface provides the developer with a mechanism whereby data can be retrieved or updated directly from an OLE, Object Linking and Embedding, compliant application. For example, an Excel macro can be coded using jBASE OBjEX to extract data from a jBASE hash file directly into an Excel spreadsheet. As jBASE OBjEX accesses data via the jBASE jEDI layer any database, for which a jEDI driver exists, can be accessed using jBASE OBjEX. For example jBASE Hash files, NT/95 directories or SQL databases.