1998 PI System Users’ Conference PI-SDK Bill Vaughan and Harry Smith

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Topics Anatomy of the PI-SDK Working with the PI-SDK Under the hood Features of the first release

1998 PI System Users’ Conference What is it? PI-API  Library of loosely related functions PI-SDK  Hierarchical Object Model

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Server Basic PI-SDK Objects Servers PIPoints Server PIPoints PIPoint

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Collections Manage a group of objects Support standard methods and properties  Count  Item  For Each  Add In PI-SDK represent underlying objects

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Collections and Parents Servers Server PIPoints PIPoint

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Server Version View from a Server StateSets StateSet PIPoints StateSet PointClasses PointClass PIPoint Server MessageLog

1998 PI System Users’ Conference PIPoint Central EventPipe PointAttributes NamedValue StateSet NamedValue PIPointAttrEdit PointAttribute DigitalState PIPoint PIPointWrite

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Object Universe

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Working with the PI-SDK

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Under the Hood

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Component Object Model Binary specification Language-independent Contract-based Familiar model  Properties  Methods  Events COM object Interfaces IUnknown

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Why COM? Unicode strings for easy localization Integrated documentation  Object browser  Context-sensitive help Microsoft uses it internally  Mission-critical OS features  High performance (DirectX)

1998 PI System Users’ Conference COM Everywhere: Developer tools Visual C++  Native support: #import Delphi PowerBuilder Visual Basic  Early binding PIPoint Server

1998 PI System Users’ Conference COM Everywhere: Applications Web Browsers  Internet Explorer  Netscape Visual Basic for Applications  ProcessBook  Excel  Visio  And more!

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Implementation Architecture Components  No user interface  C++ / ATL Controls  GUI faceplates  Visual Basic Faceplate control (VB) Simple COM object (ATL)

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Initial Release Goals Expose new PI on NT and UNIX features Coexist with PI-API Support existing PI on VMS features

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Initial Release Features Create Points Edit point attributes Delete points Support for new point types Point Classes State Sets

1998 PI System Users’ Conference Summing Up ActiveX Server Easy to understand Easy to use Access to new features Basis of new OSI products Built for integration

1998 PI System Users’ Conference and just plain fun...