DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange).

PrintFaqtory’s DDE interface is provided for intergration with SCADA/HMI applications that don’t support the superior OPC interface and Office applications such as Access, Excel and Word. This interface is only applicable for Tag style data.

Below is an example of using DDE with Excel. Every time the report prints and the Tag value changes, the Excel cell data is updated.

PrintFaqtory maintains 3 arrays of DDE data for each report as follows:

• TagName(n). A zero based array of Tag names i.e. the first Tag name is referenced as TagName(0), the second as TagName(1) etc.
• TagValue(n). A zero based array of Tag values.
• TagUnits(n). A zero based array of Tag units.

To setup a DDE conversation, the calling application sets the Link Topic which for PrintFaqtory is ‘PrintFaqtory’ plus the pipe character ‘|’ plus the name of the report. In the above example, the report name is ‘Bangpoo’ so the full Link Topic for this report is ‘PrintFaqtory|Bangpoo’. The second item that needs to be set is the Link Item which is one of the three Tag arrays above.

Example:

To reference the first defined Tag in the above Excel example, select cell A4 and enter
=PrintFaqtory|Bangpoo!'TagName(0)' in the formula box. Select cell B4 and enter
=PrintFaqtory|Bangpoo!'TagValue(0)’. Select cell C4 and enter
=PrintFaqtory|Bangpoo!'TagUnits(0)'.

Repeat the above until all Tags have been defined, remembering to increment the array number by one for every row.

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