| The EasyCom ActiveX control
is a Winsock/Telnet communication component.
It is intended for VB and VC++ developers to easily add communication
capabilities to their applications. Examples of such communication
capabilities might include handling and configuration of remote
network equipments and servers, and getting information on
such systems.
EasyCom vs. scripting in terminal emulators
There is a couple of advantages about using EasyCom in VB
or VC++ rather than using terminal emulators built-in scripting
tools. First, you get more control on the running conversation
: for instance, when reading, EasyCom affords easily detecting
different possible answers from the remote system. Second,
you can easily get the characters received and handle and
process them as required. See the VB example attached for
an example of this.
Services
Each instance of EasyCom handles a connection that can be
used for reading and writing. The Read method can wait until
one of the strings expected by the calling program is received,
and give back control when this (or a time-out) happens.
Errors are handled through error messages that are displayed
for a duration that you specify, thus affording working with
absolutely no user intervention. But if you made another choice,
you can also give user feedback using a “terminal view”
window to display the characters exchanged. For even more
user control, this window includes a Cancel button that affords
prematurely terminating the connection.
Last, you can specify that you are not waiting for any string
to arrive from the remote computer and be notified through
an event if such a string arrives.
Communication layers supported
EasyCom affords working with several distinct underlying
communication layers, but the interface is the same whatever
the layer. The difference resides only in the string that
you pass to the Open method, and that contains all of the
configuration data for the layer :
1. TCP/IP is implemented through the use of the Windows sockets
version 2.0. A minimal Telnet emulation is also included.
This minimal emulation mainly denies whatever service request
is done by the remote computer and hides the Telnet protocol
characters exchanged from the component's Read routine.
2. Asynchronous communications are implemented through the
use of Mscomm32.ocx, a freely redistributable Microsoft component.
The Mscomm32.ocx option makes the assumption that you are
connected to a PAD asynchronous equipment using the ITU-TT
X3 recommendation (this equipment says "COM" or
"ENGAGED" when the conversation is established,
and says "LIB" or "CLR" when it is freed).
Legacy X25 and Wincom communication layers
The following layers are not included with the base release
of the product but can be provided if required :
3. X25. The software can run on a machine containing a Prima
Atlantis X25 board (Windows 95 or Windows NT), or on a client
computer (Windows 95) using the Atlantis Gateway.
4. Wincom. Wincom is a Terminal Emulator from Icom informatique,
offering TCP/IP, asynchronous and X25 communications. The
versions supported by EasyCom are V4.2 (32 bits) and Wincom
VT320 (16 bits). |
EasyCom product information
