VBA Programming Reference

VBA is a Visual Basic for Applications (VBA) and VBScript-compatible Basic scripting language. Plant SCADA has embedded support for VBA.

Note: VBA is not supported on a 64-bit process, such as an alarm server operating in Extended Memory mode. If a call to VBA code occurs from a 64-bit process, an error code will be returned, a hardware alarm will be raised and the Cicode thread will stop.

VBA has the following features:

• VBA code is multithreaded and fully scheduled within the Plant SCADA Kernel.

• VBA uses the same well proven engine that Cicode uses and can be used wherever Cicode is used.

• VBA has a small footprint of under 400K.

• VBA code is directly callable from Plant SCADA Command and Expression fields.

• VBA code is callable from Cicode and vice versa.

• VBA code provides native support for ActiveX objects, Plant SCADA Variable Tags and Alarm Tags.

• VBA makes ActiveX object manipulating easier. It allows direct interaction with the object models from 3rd party applications such as Word, Excel, etc.

  Note: You may notice slight differences between VBA and VBA in other applications; this is normal as each application has a different object model.

The Cicode Editor has been upgraded to fully support VBA. Supported features include:

• Integrated Cicode and VBA compiler

• Integrated Cicode and VBA source code editor

• Integrated Cicode and VBA debugger

This section contains information on the VBA programming language and describes the following:

• Integrating VBA into a Project

• Understanding VBA Language Basics

• VBA Function Reference

• ASCII/ANSI Character Code Listings

  Note: For information regarding methods you can use to extend Plant SCADA that do not require VBA, see the topic Extensibility.