Obba: Handling Java Objects in Excel, OpenOffice, LibreOffice and NeoOffice
31. 03 12 - 22:00 - Category:Software
(English Text)
Obba provides a bridge between spreadsheets and Java classes. With Obba, you can use spreadsheets as GUIs for your Java libraries; turning your Java library to platform independent spreadsheet add-ins. Compatible with Excel/Windows, OpenOffice/Win/Mac/Linux, LibreOffice/Win/Mac/Linux, NeoOffice/Mac.
Its main features are:
- Stateful access to almost all objects and methods running in a Java virtual machine via a fixed set of spread sheet functions.
- Client/server support: The Java virtual machine providing the add-in may run on the same computer or a remote computer - without any change to the spreadsheet.
- Loading of arbitrary jar or class files at runtime through a spreadsheet function.
- Instantiation of Java objects, storing the object reference under a given object label.
- Invocation of methods on objects referenced by their object handle, storing the handle to the result under a given object label.
- Asynchronous method invocation and tools for synchronization, turning your spreadsheet into a multi-threaded calculation tool.
- Allows arbitrary number of arguments for constructors or methods (avoids the limitation of the number of arguments for Excel worksheet functions).
- Serialization and de-serialization (save Serializable objects to a file, restore them any time later).
- All this through spreadsheet functions, without any additional line of code (no VBA needed, no additional Java code needed).
For a tutorial see Obba tutorial. In this tutorial you create a Java class and a spreadsheet to fetch Stock quotes from finance.yahoo.com.
For a more detailed introduction see Obba documentation and Obba home page.
Version 3.0.6 of Obba is a major revision. It brings support for running the Java virtual machine on a different machine, i.e. via Obba, the spreadsheet may perform its Java calculations on a remote machine.
For more information see Obba's homepage.