Calling SPSS 15 from Visual Basic

[Richard Ristow]

This is way out of my area.

I'm working with someone who has a project written in Visual Basic,
which emits SPSS code and then calls SPSS to run it. The author of
the code is gone.

They're trying to convert from SPSS 13 to SPSS 15. The VB class used
to invoke SPSS 13 doesn't seem to work at all; the difference seems a
lot greater than changing names of executables and the like. That
doesn't seem entirely surprising, given the number of facilities that
SPSS 15 has and SPSS 13 doesn't, that might be invoked from an external call.

Does anybody have experience or advice about invoking SPSS 15 from
Visual Basic? To start with (and maybe for a good while), this would
only need to run facilities that exist in SPSS 13: in this case, some
transformation language; some procedures, mainly REGRESSION; and OMS,
mostly or entirely to .SAV files.

Many thanks for all suggestions,
Richard

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[Peck, Jon]

The Set objSpssApp = CreateObject("SPSS.Application")
call is used to start a new SPSS session or, similarly, GetObject to attach to a running session.  This should work the same in 13 or 15.  We changed the GUIDs every release (this will stop with 16 due to reengineering), so if you are invoking SPSS via an explicit GUID, you would need to change that, but the application name is the normal way to set things up.  (GUIDs look like, actually they are, long strings of hexadecimal digits.)  Since you are guilty of the sin you chastise others for of not posting your code or the details of the error, I can only guess what might be happening :-(

My first guess is that SPSS 15 is not properly registered.  Try running rereg.bat in the SPSS 15 installation directory to see if that makes a difference

Otherwise, the COM automation calls are, as far as I recall, compatible between 13 and 15, so we'll need more information.  Most of the differences would come in the SPSS syntax that might be run from the VB calls.

Regards,
Jon

-----Original Message-----
From: SPSSX(r) Discussion [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Richard Ristow
Sent: Sunday, March 09, 2008 3:39 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [SPSSX-L] Calling SPSS 15 from Visual Basic

This is way out of my area.

I'm working with someone who has a project written in Visual Basic,
which emits SPSS code and then calls SPSS to run it. The author of
the code is gone.

They're trying to convert from SPSS 13 to SPSS 15. The VB class used
to invoke SPSS 13 doesn't seem to work at all; the difference seems a
lot greater than changing names of executables and the like. That
doesn't seem entirely surprising, given the number of facilities that
SPSS 15 has and SPSS 13 doesn't, that might be invoked from an external call.

Does anybody have experience or advice about invoking SPSS 15 from
Visual Basic? To start with (and maybe for a good while), this would
only need to run facilities that exist in SPSS 13: in this case, some
transformation language; some procedures, mainly REGRESSION; and OMS,
mostly or entirely to .SAV files.

Many thanks for all suggestions,
Richard

=====================
To manage your subscription to SPSSX-L, send a message to
[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD

=====================
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[hidden email] (not to SPSSX-L), with no body text except the
command. To leave the list, send the command
SIGNOFF SPSSX-L
For a list of commands to manage subscriptions, send the command
INFO REFCARD