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DDE usage with VB6

Here is the situation: I have this customer that owns a huge junkyard in USA, and although he use topline computers and systems, there is some data that he receives in real time from somewhere else that still uses VERY early data format. Because that he needs to use an application called ProComm Plus from Symantec.

This application displays an ugly text screen for his salesperson, but now my customer need to extract some data from this screen and send to VB. Then VB will use this data to query a MSSQL database and send data back.

The problem is that the only kind of communication that ProComm uses to talk to external applications is DDE (that as far as I could see, was deprecated in VB.NET). I have found a cool tutorial for VB6, but unfortunatelly it just covers communication between two VB applications using form link.

I would like to know if anyone have some idea about how to catch a message sent from a non-VB application through a DDE channel, and how to send another message to this same channel.

ANY help or tip will be welcome.

Thanks to everybody in advance!
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sakuya_su

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Why not scrap ProComm and collect the data from the external device directly from within VB.  I think that ProComm is just acting as a terminal emulator. What type  of device is the procom attached to., is it a serial RS232 device? If it is your problem is over, no need to use DDE.