All about the Dexterity OLE Container

Much has been asked about the Microsoft Dexterity OLE Container lately and I wanted to address this topic by providing some background on the technology and how it is used from GP. In addition, I will address how to automate OLE externally from other applications.

Definition

In principle, OLE is a compound document technology from Microsoft based on the Component Object Model (COM). OLE allows an object such as a graphic, video clip, spreadsheet, etc. to be embedded into a document, called the Container Application. If the object is playable such as a video, when it is double clicked by the user, a media player is launched. If the object is allowed to be edited, the application associated with it (the Server Application) is launched.

An object can be linked instead of embedded, in which case the Container Application does not physically hold the object, but provides a pointer to it. If a change is made to a linked object, all the documents that contain that same link are automatically updated the next time you open them. An application can be both client and server, called an Object Packager, which is not something I will cover in this article.

History of OLE

OLE 1.0, released in 1990 and was capable of maintaining active links between two documents or even embedding one type of document within another. The server and client libraries, OLESVR.DLL and OLECLI.DLL, were originally designed to communicate between themselves using the WM_DDE_EXECUTE message. OLE 2.0 followed in the steps of OLE 1.0, sharing many of the same design goals, but was re-implemented on the COM platform. New features were automation, drag-and-drop, in-place activation and structured storage.

OLE custom controls were introduced in 1994 as a replacement for the Visual Basic Extension controls. In particular, any container that supported OLE 2.0 could already embed OLE custom controls, although these controls cannot react to events unless the container supports this. OLE custom controls are usually shipped in the form of a dynamic link library with the .ocx extension. In 1996 all interfaces for controls (except IUnknown) were made optional to keep the file size of controls down, so they would download faster.

The Dexterity OLE Container

The Dexterity OLE Container is part of the Dexterity Shared Components. In OLE compound document technology, it is the OLE client application (CONTAIN.EXE), which holds the linked or embedded objects. The Dexterity OLE Container first surfaced with the release of Dexterity 3.0 in 1993.

The Dexterity OLE Container can be opened via most record notes windows in the Dynamics GP application, by clicking on the paperclip button.

















Dexterity OLE Container linked or embedded objects are stored in the path indicated by the OLEPath key in the DEX.INI file.














The following is a typical DEX.INI file layout:

[General]
.
.
OLEPath=C:\Notes\
.
.

When an object is linked or embed in the Dexterity OLE Container window for the first time, Dynamics GP will append the 'Intercompany ID'\OLENotes to the OLEPath directory to create a unique physical storage directory for each object attached or embedded to a record note. In turn, the note index value associated to the record note serves as a file reference to the OLE object, this is an 8-character hexadecimal file name is created with the hexadecimal value of the note index.

For example, if the note index associated to the record is 16, a file name is created with the name 00000010.

The note index is also stored in the Records Notes Master table (SY03900) and a text is appended to the note in GP with the legend "OLE Link present".

SELECT NOTEINDX, DATE1, TIME1, DEX_ROW_ID, TXTFIELD FROM SY03900

The query will produce the following resultset:

NOTEINDX                                DATE1                   TIME1                   DEX_ROW_ID  TXTFIELD
--------------------------------------- ----------------------- ----------------------- ----------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
16.00000                                2008-11-28 00:00:00.000 1900-01-01 15:31:26.000 1           OLE Link present.

(1 row(s) affected)

The following is the physical file representation.









*Click on image to enlarge

NOTE: The next note index value is obtained from NOTEINDX column, in the company master table, DYNAMICS.dbo.SY01500.

Unfortunately, the Dexterity OLE Container application was designed only to work from within Microsoft Dynamics GP, hence no programmatic interface was created to support external integrations from other applications. There are no command lines to the CONTAINER.EXE application, however there are a few DDE commands available: Open, Close, Delete, Save. These correspond to the Dexterity OLE function library to control the OLE Container.

The Dexterity OLE Container does not make use of the Microsoft OLE Container Control, and was implemented as a C/C++ based application. Other sources have alluded to the fact that it was implemented based on an MSDN container sample.

Related Articles

KB article 268470 - "Sample: FramerEx.exe Is an MDI ActiveX Document Container Sample Written in Visual C++", Microsoft Support.

Visual C++ Samples - OCLIENT Sample: Illustrates a Visual Editing Container Application. Microsoft Developer's Network (MSDN).

Visual C++ Samples: DRAWCLI Sample: Illustrates Integrating Active Container Support with Application-Specific Features. Microsoft Developer's Network (MSDN).

While the Dexterity OLE Container is not of much help as an external application, you can always run the CONTAIN.EXE application, then drag-and-drop any of the hexadecimal file references to the application's desktop. In turn this will open the linked or embedded objects.

In my next installment, I will show you how to automate the OLE Container from other applications in order to read standard Dynamics GP OLE notes.

Until next post!

MG.-
Mariano Gomez, MIS, MVP, MCP, PMP
Maximum Global Business, LLC
http://www.maximumglobalbusiness.com/