dde?

[Michael Abbott]

"Alex Martelli" <aleax at aleax.it> wrote in
news:9n53rh01kut at enews1.newsguy.com: 

> ActivePython (and win32all as an add-on to normal Python) does
> support dde, but you're *FAR* better off avoiding it -- use
> COM instead.  DDE is a zombie -- dead since many years ago,
> yet keeps walking (stumbling) around and doing damage.

I would say several things here.

1. The implementation of DDE in ActivePython is very poor, and doesn't do 
very much.  In particular, it is very incomplete.

2. Unfortunately, the DDEML library (Microsoft's canonical implementation 
of DDE) is also poor and contains serious bugs.

3. DDE has a number of potentially crippling faults, but it is quite wrong 
to describe it as a damaging zombie.  When used correctly, it works 
extremely well.

4. DDE is the only well behaved and reliable way to push dynamically 
updating data into Excel (this is a *very* long story).

> 
> Anyway, if you're keen on DDE -- no docs, AFAIK, but you'll
> find tangential mention in the thread at:
> http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/1999-July/007106.html
> including one tiny example.

On the other hand, I concur with Alex: if you don't need to use it, don't.  
Particularly if you're planning to write your own server: it's quite a lot 
harder to get it right than meets the eye at first.