EViews 7 External Interface Features

EViews 7 continues our ongoing effort to better integrate with other applications. Newly added COM Automation support, a new OLEDB driver, and an Excel-Add in make this the most connected EViews ever.

The Excel Add-in

The EViews Excel Add-in offers a simple interface for fetching and linking from within Microsoft Excel (2000 and later) to series and matrix objects stored in EViews workfiles and databases.

Installation of the EViews Excel Add-in is done during the normal EViews installation procedure. Once installed and activated from within Microsoft Excel, you may use the Add-in to retrieve data from EViews databases and workfiles without leaving Excel.

You may choose to retrieve the EViews data via a simple import, or using an import and link in which Excel will automatically refresh the data when the EViews workfile or database changes. For more information see the Using The EViews Excel Add-In whitepaper.

The EViews OLEDB Driver

External applications may now use OLEDB to read data stored in EViews workfiles (WF1) and EViews databases (EDB). The EViews OLEDB driver provides an easy-to-use interface for programs to read EViews data.

The EViews OLEDB driver is automatically installed and registered on your computer when you install EViews 7. Once installed, you may use OLEDB-aware clients or custom programs to read series, vector, and matrix objects directly from EViews workfiles and databases. For more information see the Using EViews OLEDB Driver whitepaper.

EViews COM Automation Server

EViews offers COM Automation server support so that external programs or scripts can launch or control EViews, transfer data, and execute EViews commands.

EViews may be used as a COM Automation server so that an external program or script may launch and control EViews programmatically. EViews COM is comprised of two class objects: Manager and Application.

The Manager class is used to manage and create instances of the main EViews Application class. The Application class provides access to EViews functionality and data. Most notably, the Application class Run and a variety of Get and Put methods provide you with access to EViews commands and allow you to obtain read or write access to series, vectors, matrix, and scalar objects.

Note that web server access to EViews via COM is not allowed. Furthermore, EViews will limit COM access to a single instance when run by other Windows services or run remotely via Distributed COM.

For more information see the EViews COM Automation whitepaper.

EViews COM Automation Client Support (MATLAB and R)

EViews offers COM Automation client support application for MATLAB and R servers so that EViews may be used to launch or control the application, transfer data, or execute commands.

The client support includes a set of EViews functions for exporting an EViews data object into the external application, running commands and programs in the application, and importing data back into EViews. These functions provide easy access to the powerful programming languages of MATLAB and R to create programs and routines that perform tasks not currently implemented in EViews. The interface also offers access to the large library of statistical routines already written in the MATLAB and R languages.

There are six EViews commands that control the use of external applications: xclose, xget, xlog, xopen, xput, and xrun.

xopen and xclose are used to open and close a connection to the external application (MATLAB or R). xput and xget are used to send data to and from the external application. xrun is used to send a command to the external application, and, finally, xlog lets you show or hide an external application log window within EViews.