OWL deductive add-in to Excel

[Johannes]

Hi, I'm trying to build an add-in for Excel that will communicate with an
reasoning engine using an implementation of OWL (prob using C# but not 100%
decided). My problem is that I'm new to Excel programing and I can't seem to
find a text explaining how to implement the necessary "hooks" in Excel to
this soon to be engine of mine.

In short, how can I make Excel communicate with the rest of my code.

To find the information I need have proven though, this is uncharted waters
for me and I'm suffering from information overflow.
If you have any experience of something similar or if you just could point
me in the right direction for finding usefull information regarding this I
would appriciate it.

Sincerely

 

[Peter]

What you'll need is for your engine to be an ActiveX Object (MS VS .NET should provide ample instructions for that), then in Excel you either add a Reference to your project (from the IDE window, click on Tools -> References..., find and checkmark your object) and Dim variables as your class, or Dim a variable as Object and use CreateObject(<classname>). Then you access the methods and properties of your engine that you've exposed.

For example, let's say that you have given your engine a classname of JEngine, have exposed a method, DoStuff(stuff as String), and have added a Reference to your Excel project:

Dim myEng as New JEngine
Dim myStuff as String
myStuff = "blah blah"
myEng.DoStuff(myStuff)

Or something along those lines.

hth,

-Peter