R help - Dec 2002 - R as a COM client - is it possible?

Dear all,

In S+, there are functions like

	create.ole.object
	call.ole.method
	release.ole.object

for communicating with other programs which work as a COM server (on
Windows).

Is it possible to do something similar in R (I've studied the
'connections'
facilities, but they do not seem to work).

=========================================S?ren H?jsgaard,  PhD, Senior Scientist
Biometry Research Unit
Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences
Research Centre Foulum, DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark
Phone: +45 8999 1703
E-mail : sorenh at agrsci.dk
Homepage : http://www.jbs.agrsci.dk/~sorenh/

On Mon, 9 Dec 2002, [iso-8859-1] Søren Højsgaard wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> In S+, there are functions like
>
> 	create.ole.object
> 	call.ole.method
> 	release.ole.object
>
> for communicating with other programs which work as a COM server (on
> Windows).
>
> Is it possible to do something similar in R (I've studied the
'connections'
> facilities, but they do not seem to work).
They work!   But not to COM servers (a Windows-only concept).

There is a DCOM server for R on CRAN by Thomas Baier: I am not aware of a
COM/OLE client interface for R.  Perhaps some Windows user would like ot
contribute one.

-- 
Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
Professor of Applied Statistics,  http://www.stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272860 (secr)
Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595

S?ren H?jsgaard wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> In S+, there are functions like
> 
> 	create.ole.object
> 	call.ole.method
> 	release.ole.object
> 
> for communicating with other programs which work as a COM server (on
> Windows).
> 
> Is it possible to do something similar in R (I've studied the
'connections'
> facilities, but they do not seem to work).

There are currently two packages being developed that will provide
basic COM client facilities for R. Thomas Baier is developing one
which is pretty close to complete, as far as I understand, but he has
not released it yet.

And I and others here in Bell Labs are developing a package also
(along the lines of the Python win32com.client module, if that helps).
We will probably make an alpha version of our dynamic COM package
available in the next few weeks. The compiled bindings approach will
have to wait until sometime in January.  If you want to try the
current code, let me know and I can make it available.

 D.

> 
> =========================================> S?ren H?jsgaard,  PhD, Senior
Scientist
> Biometry Research Unit
> Danish Institute of Agricultural Sciences
> Research Centre Foulum, DK-8830 Tjele, Denmark
> Phone: +45 8999 1703
> E-mail : sorenh at agrsci.dk
> Homepage : http://www.jbs.agrsci.dk/~sorenh/
> 
> ______________________________________________
> R-help at stat.math.ethz.ch mailing list
> http://www.stat.math.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help
-- 
_______________________________________________________________

Duncan Temple Lang                duncan at research.bell-labs.com
Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies    office: (908)582-3217
700 Mountain Avenue, Room 2C-259  fax:    (908)582-3340
Murray Hill, NJ  07974-2070       
         http://cm.bell-labs.com/stat/duncan