Creating New Threads For ActiveX Controls At Runtime

[Paul Valliere]

The primary reason we purchased PB/DLL 6.0 some months ago was to overcome the horrible limitation Visual Basic 6.0 imposes on threads. We have been working for months on a solution using various workarounds within VB itself, however we've had no success due to the complex nature of our program.

Our program is very advanced in that we're actually loading ActiveX controls dynamically at runtime. What we need is a PB dll that allows our main program to pass it ActiveX components so they're loaded into a new thread. We understand that thus far this isn't possible because apparently there's no support for this in PB.

Is there any way at all to do this, or have we wasted our time? We absolutely need the GUI features of VB, which makes 'simply' converting all of our ActiveX controls over to PB dlls impossible.

We've reached the point where we're going to have to dump PB and VB altogether, so any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance,


Paul Valliere.

[This message has been edited by Paul Valliere (edited September 02, 2001).]

[Gregery D Engle]

Paul,

Be very careful, threads in VB can be very tricky. For example
if you call your DLL with and the DLL file creates a Thread and
then it calls back into VB, VB will crash.

If you need to make a call back to VB you have to make that call
on the same thread.

Lance knows more on this subject.

As far as ACTIVEX, you can use third part tools to use ActiveX
controls with PB


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-Greg

[Paul Noble]

Hi Paul,

Are you aware of Philippe Monteil's tools which allow PowerBASIC to use COM ? His web site,
JazzAge Software, is at http://www.jazzagesoft.com .

Another approach that occurs to me is to use ActiveX exe's ('worker' exe's) to effectively
simulate multiple threads. I wrote a database server some years ago in VB5 that does just this -
the worker exe's are out-of-process, but programatically, they are just objects. This may or
may not be useful in your context.

Regards,

Paul


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http://www.zippety.net
mailto[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Philippe Monteil]

Paul,

<<
Is there any way at all to do this, or have we wasted our time? We absolutely need the GUI features of VB, which makes 'simply' converting all of our ActiveX controls over the PB dlls impossible.
>>
I would suggest to take a look at our JA COM/PB 2.0: it will add
full support for COM components and for ActiveX controls to PB/DLL.

A 30 days, full featured Evaluation Version is available
from our web site.

Philippe Monteil
JAZZAge Software
www.jazzagesoft.com



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[Chris Roebuck]

Paul,
You might want to check out http://www.vbaccelerator.com. They are doing some
very advanced programming in VB6 including Free-Threaded ActiveX controls. They give
you the full source code to all controls. Also, check out the book Advanced Visual Basic
6.0 (http://www.bookpool.com/.x/m6g23ijnp6/ss/1?qs=curland) by Matt Curland. The author was
on the VB5 development team and shows you exactly how to do all of the things that seem impossible
using VB6. Like you, I use Powerbasic to do things like Windows Services, etc. that I can't
do in VB. I have looked at http://www.jazzagesoft.com and I would recommend that you use his stuff
prior to going to a different language. However, if you set on changing to another language,
I would suggest you look at VB.Net first. It gives the VB developer all the power of C++ with
the ease of VB (like the fact that I can use free-threading in a little as three lines of code).
I'm currently using the Beta 2 to do some very exciting things that I could
not do with VB6 (or was very difficult).

HTH,
Chris Roebuck
MCSD,MCT

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[Tom Hanlin]

As near I can tell, VB.NET is not a BASIC, so much as C++ with some statements renamed with a BASIC style. If you really need to move away from PowerBASIC and Visual Basic altogether, I'd suggest Delphi instead. The syntax and visual design are likely to be more familiar, and you won't be locked into the uncertain future of the unreleased .NET framework.

You can certainly get there with PowerBASIC, though.

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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Rich Brockway]

If you go the Delphi route, I'd check out the VB to Delphi converter
at www.deluxsoftware.com.

Rich


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[Philippe Monteil]

<<and you won't be locked
<<into the uncertain future of the unreleased .NET framework.
.NET's future is as 'uncertain' as MS's as a company is, that
is it is hardly questionable IMO. .NET migth very well become
the best available development plateform in a near future. Many
independent articles will explain it better than I will.

PB has wasted major business oportunities because it has refused
to take a close and non-biaised look at COM years ago. It was the
only company in the world capable of releasing a product able to
get the VB community rid of some of the most severe limitations
imposed by VB's COM support. VB was not able to produce multi-
threaded COM components for example, and this was a real problem
for creating highly-scalable, critical business applications.

I hope that PB will not use the 'bloatware' excuse once more
to repeat the same mistake with .NET. The .NET runtime will be
quickly be integrated in the Windows OSs, the question of its size
will therefore quickly become irrelevant.

If VB.NET is not a 'real' Basic anymore, why not release a PB.NET
compiler and make it become the only 'real' one available?

Philippe Monteil
JAZZAge Software




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[Tom Hanlin]

Hmm? When Microsoft Bob went down the tubes, I don't think the company even noticed. I imagine the failure of .NET, should it happen, will cause a bit more ripple; but there's no reason to think that it won't fail just because Microsoft made it. .NET and VB.NET seem completely off-target to me but, that's just my opinion.

Of course, Microsoft's failures are often PowerBASIC's gains. No reason to complain about that! And sure, if .NET actually gets off the ground, there is likely to be one or more PowerBASIC compilers for it.

Likewise, it seems that PowerBASIC's lack of COM support has been a business opportunity for you as well, with JA/Com. I'd think you'd find no reason to complain about that!

There's a wonderful lot of room in the world for new computing solutions. Fortunately for all of us, no one company owns the whole market, nor is it ever likely to do so.

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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Michael Mattias]

My view: .NET is about ten years too early. It - or something like it - could be pretty well deployed in the 2011-2016 time frame.

Of course, I am not betting the farm against Microsoft: anyone with that much cash to spend cannot be ignored.

Just as an adjunct: it's so much fun with my new MDSN disk to have to have all the .NET (vulgar euphemism) clutter up my API reference lookups. I guess the Boys From Redmond want me to get in the habit early.

MCM

[Tom Hanlin]

Under MSDN's View menu, Define Subset will help.

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Tom Hanlin
PowerBASIC Staff

[Michael Mattias]

Under MSDN's View menu, Define Subset will help

Sometimes it helps, but since you can only select one group at a time, I find it easier to just use Index/Contents/Platform Sdk/etc for "standard" lookups. And it seems I can never get to some of the pages through search, especially the "overviews" of the controls.

Oh, well, as long as I can actually locate the API reference and the "see also" links, I guess I should be happy....


MCM

[Chris Roebuck]

Tom:
It seems odd to me that you would recommend Delphi to a VB
programmer. First of all, you are turning a programmer away from
Basic (and Powerbasic) to Pascal. Secondly, your own company is
working on a Linux compiler which Borland already has in its Kylix product.
At least if a programmer stays with VB, they could augment the
shortcomings with Powerbasic.

Also, it is very obvious to me that you have not looked at VB.Net or you
would not have made the statement, "VB.Net is not a Basic, so much
as C++ with some statements renamed with a Basic style." Yes, VB.Net
is different from VB6 in the same way that MFC programming is different
from calling API's directly using C++. The C++ language constructs are
the same, however the syntax and style is very different. VB.Net
is just VB6 with a new MFC library (or in this case the CLR - Common
Language Runtime). Now, don't let the word Runtime mislead you, VB.Net
is a fully compiled language (compiled to native code). However,
in the case of any .Net language, the compiler is actually the CLR.
The CLR compiles either at execution time (known as JIT) or at setup
time, which is selectable by the programmer. Now, given that the
CLR provides native compilation, any platform that has a CLR can be
targeted by a .Net application. I think that you will see Microsoft
release a CLR for a wide range of platforms. This will provide them
with a way of getting extra revenue from their existing products
(like Office) without having to rewrite a platform specific version
of the product (like Office for the Mac). Microsoft can write an
application once which is .Net enabled, and then sell that program
to anyone that has the CLR running on their OS. I would not be
surprised to see Windows itself ported to the CLR so that it could
set on top of any OS and provide a common User Interface. In this
way, Microsoft has made the DOJ's case disappear because the computing
public can choose any OS and still run their Office applications.
Of course, I'm sure Microsoft will charge for the CLR on a different
platform (Windows will come with its CLR). In this way, it doesn't
matter which OS you have on your computer.

Chris Roebuck
MCSD, MCT
Senior Software Architect

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[Lance Edmonds]

Chris, before jumping up and down, you may wish to review the thread discussion again, especially Tom's response in relation to the previous replies...

Thanks!

PS: If you think that PowerBASIC has not taken a good look at .NET, well...

Anyway, this is getting off topic for this forum...

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Kev Peel]

All those acronyms dizzy me

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Kev G Peel
KGP Software, Bridgwater, UK.
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>

[Philippe Monteil]

<<PS: If you think that PowerBASIC has not taken a good look at .NET, well...
And what does PB think of .NET?

Philippe



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[Lance Edmonds]

It would be inappropriate for Tech Support to offer any comment...

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Lance
PowerBASIC Support
mailto:[email protected][email protected]</A>