Scripting OAK

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A distinctive quality of OAK is that it can be scripted, that is, driven by a program prepared by you.

This capability is significant because the market for software that can manipulate spreadsheets falls into two categories.

•	There are applications that are used by a single analyst, typically on a single spreadsheet, and which cost a few hundred pounds, dollars or euros. OAK is one example of these.

•	And there are much more costly systems, which use centralised databases to track all the spreadsheet activity within a department or a whole enterprise, often to comply with regulatory regimes such as Sarbanes Oxley. Manufacturers of these systems include Prodiance and Cluster Seven.

The ability to direct the facilities of OAK from a simple program blurs the formerly sharp distinction between these categories. Some things that previously could only be done using one of the expensive software applications may be possible with OAK and a few dozen lines of code.

This section describes how to use the scripting facilities of OAK. The examples are given using VBA, but OAK can be driven from C# or other programming languages that can interface with Microsoft's Component Object Model (COM).