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StorageTools Features
[Source code included]

Learn more about StorageTools features such as:

• Build complex file documents
• Implement Object Storage
• Access Document Properties
• Registry Control
• Resource Compiler

Build complex file documents

Structured Storage allows you to create files that organize information easily. Blocks of data can be placed in hierarchical form, just as files are placed in directories. It's like having an entire file system in each file. You can also create and work with compound documents - a standard for document storage.

Structured Storage takes care of allocating and freeing space within a file, so just as you need not concern yourself with the physical placement of files on disk, you can disregard the actual location of data in the file. Plus: with its support for transactioning you can easily implement undo operations and incremental saves in your application.

StorageTools allows you to take advantage of the same file storage system used by many of Microsoft's own applications. Includes sample programs (with source) that let you examine the structure of any structured storage based file so you can see exactly how they do it.

Because structured storage provides direct random access to individual streams, it allows much more efficient editing than XML (which requires reading and writing an entire file when any changes are made).

Implement Object Storage

COM objects have the ability to store their state as binary data using a standard interface called IPersistStream. Visual Basic 6 objects can be made self-persisting by setting the "persistable" property of a public class to true ("persistable").

Desaware's StorageTools makes it easy to persist object state in a structured storage stream. Simply create the stream and save the object to it. Later, you can recreate the object and restore its state by simply applying the GetObject method to the stream.

StorageTools is ideal for applications that store state or manage data using internal class hierarchies. It is also effective for storing object state of Internet applications.

Access Document Properties

The Structured Storage framework defines common streams of data called SummaryInformation and DocumentSummaryInformation which an application can use to store information that it wishes to be public and accessible to the system and other applications. These streams are divided into fields called "properties". Common properties include the name of the author, keywords, the number of words in the document and the last time the document was printed. You can see these document properties in Office applications, or by selecting the "Properties" file menu item in Explorer.

Desaware's StorageTools allows your Visual Basic application to view and edit the document properties for any document that uses Structured Storage, including Office document properties. It also allows you to create your own document formats that support public document properties.

Registry Control

The Desaware Registry Control makes it easy to access the Registry and the Registration Database. Keys within the Registry are accessed like directories. Values are converted to data types compatible with Visual Basic. Powerful search capabilities are included, allowing you to not only search among keys and value names, but within the value data itself.

Resource Compiler

Visual Basic supports resource (.RES) files that can contain various types of resources such as strings, bitmaps and icons that are embedded in the executable file when it is compiled.

Unfortunately, creating resource files normally requires learning the rather cryptic .RC file format and use of the Microsoft command line resource compiler, or use of Visual C++.

The Desaware Resource Compiler offers and easy to use graphical interface for defining resource files. It supports two different intermediate file formats for resource scripts. The .DRL format contains a resource list which contains text and links image files from your hard drive. The .DRC format embeds the image information into the file, so you need not worry about losing original images.

Buy Desaware's StorageTools as Part of the COM Universal bundle for $649 or Buy COM AND .NET Universal packages for $995 .