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PROGRAMMING STATISTICA FROM .NET

Virtually every aspect of STATISTICA is exposed as a set of COM interfaces that are registered on a
machine when STATISTICA is installed. Since .NET-based languages cannot communicate with COM
directly, a wrapper class called the COM Interop can be utilized to integrate the STATISTICA libraries into
your .NET project. The COM Interop layer is created automatically by the Visual Studio .NET IDE when
you import a COM interface. The COM Interop layer handles all of the details regarding interacting with
the COM libraries in .NET. With the COM Interop layer in place, the STATISTICA COM interfaces behave
like any other .NET object.

Adding the STATISTICA 6 Object Library into your .NET project

The .NET Interop layer is created automatically by adding the desired STATISTICA COM interfaces into
your .NET project. STATISTICA 6 Object Library is the base STATISTICA COM library. To add the
STATISTICA 6 Object Library to a .NET project, first select the desired .NET project in Solution Explorer,
and then select Add References from the shortcut menu (accessed by right-clicking on the .NET project).
The Add Reference dialog will be displayed.

Figure 1 - The References shortcut menu is displayed.

In the Add Reference dialog, select the COM tab. From the Component Name list, select STATISTICA
6 Object Library, and click OK.

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Figure 2 - Adding the STATISTICA object library to the project.

At this point, the necessary COM Interop library is created automatically. Under the project References
node, you will now see the entry STATISTICA,

Figure 3 The STATISTICA reference is added to the project.

The file Interop.STATISTICA.dll is also added to the project output directory. The STATISTICA COM
Interop library is stored in this file. To view the STATISTICA object library from your .NET project, rightclick on the STATISTICA reference, and from the shortcut menu, select View in Object Browser.

U.S. Headquarters: StatSoft, Inc.

Australia: StatSoft Pacific Pty Ltd.
Brazil: StatSoft South America
Bulgaria: StatSoft Bulgaria Ltd.
Czech Rep.: StatSoft Czech Rep. s.r.o.
China: StatSoft China

2300 E. 14th St.

Tulsa, OK 74104

France: StatSoft France

Germany: StatSoft GmbH
Hungary: StatSoft Hungary Ltd.
India: StatSoft India Pvt. Ltd.
Israel: StatSoft Israel Ltd.

USA

(918) 749-1119

Italy: StatSoft Italia srl

Japan: StatSoft Japan Inc.
Korea: StatSoft Korea
Netherlands: StatSoft Benelux BV
Norway: StatSoft Norway AS

Fax: (918) 749-2217

[email protected]

Poland: StatSoft Polska Sp. z o.o.

Portugal: StatSoft Ibrica Lda
Russia: StatSoft Russia
Spain: StatSoft Ibrica Lda

www.statsoft.com

S. Africa: StatSoft S. Africa (Pty) Ltd.

Sweden: StatSoft Scandinavia AB
Taiwan: StatSoft Taiwan
UK: StatSoft Ltd.

Figure 4 - STATISTICA object library shown in the .NET Object Browser.

Manually Creating the COM Interop Library
It is also possible to create the COM Interop library manually and import it into your .NET project. This
gives you the ability to specify a different name for the Interop DLL as well as define a custom
namespace. The program that enables you to create an Interop is TLBIMP.EXE. From a Visual Studio
command prompt, execute TLBIMP with an initial parameter of the type library source. In the example
below, the output DLL name and namespace are also specified:

Figure 5 - Using TLBIMP to generate an Interop DLL.

In this example, we reference the file STATIST.EXE since that executable contains the STATISTICA 6
Object Library type library. Once the Interop DLL is generated, you can add it to your .NET project by
selecting Add Reference from the Solution Explorer as before, but this time click the Browse button to
select the newly created Interop DLL.
Supporting Multiple Versions of STATISTICA
To support multiple version numbers of STATISTICA, it is necessary to maintain separate STATISTICA 6
Object Library Interop DLLs for each version number of STATISTICA you want to support. You can use
the TLBIMP command to generate Interop DLLs against specific versions of STATIST.EXE. When

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Australia: StatSoft Pacific Pty Ltd.
Brazil: StatSoft South America
Bulgaria: StatSoft Bulgaria Ltd.
Czech Rep.: StatSoft Czech Rep. s.r.o.
China: StatSoft China

2300 E. 14th St.

Tulsa, OK 74104

France: StatSoft France

Germany: StatSoft GmbH
Hungary: StatSoft Hungary Ltd.
India: StatSoft India Pvt. Ltd.
Israel: StatSoft Israel Ltd.

USA

(918) 749-1119

Italy: StatSoft Italia srl

Japan: StatSoft Japan Inc.
Korea: StatSoft Korea
Netherlands: StatSoft Benelux BV
Norway: StatSoft Norway AS

Fax: (918) 749-2217

[email protected]

Poland: StatSoft Polska Sp. z o.o.

Portugal: StatSoft Ibrica Lda
Russia: StatSoft Russia
Spain: StatSoft Ibrica Lda

www.statsoft.com

S. Africa: StatSoft S. Africa (Pty) Ltd.

Sweden: StatSoft Scandinavia AB
Taiwan: StatSoft Taiwan
UK: StatSoft Ltd.

distributing the application, make sure the correct version of the STATISTICA Interop DLL is deployed
with your .NET application.
For any other STATISTICA libraries, such as STATISTICAGraphics or the various analytical modules, it is
possible to maintain a single Interop DLL generated from the lowest version number of STATISTICA that
you need to support. You can use the TLBIMP.EXE utility to generate the Interop DLL from the older
version number DLL (such as STA_MGRA.DLL in the case of STATISTICAGraphics). The generated
Interop should then be added as a reference to the .NET project (as opposed to the traditional approach
of adding a reference to the COM library and letting VS.NET create the Interop DLL automatically).
Instantiating STATISTICA
Because of its COM architecture, STATISTICA can be incorporated into many different development
environments. When using STATISTICA from an external development environment, it is necessary to
have a top level object called the application object. The application object is the application itself and will
contain other objects (for example, spreadsheets and graphs), but access to these other objects is
restricted unless the application object is running.
Assuming you are using the default namespace STATISTICA, the interface you should declare your
variable as is STATISTICA.Application. To create an instance of STATISTICA, set your variable equal to
a new STATISTICA.ApplicationClass().

Figure 6 - Creates a STATISTICA instance and makes it visible.

When an instance of the STATISTICA.ApplicationClass is created, a STATIST.EXE process will be
launched. This is equivalent to launching STATISTICA from the Start menu. The STATISTICA instance is
initially hidden but can be made visible. Since it is a separate process, all calls to this instance are made
out of process.
The Library Version of STATISTICA
In addition to the STATISTICA.Application object, there is also a lighter-weight, higher-performance
version of the object called STATISTICA.Library. The Library version is licensed separately and therefore
may not be available with your installation. It contains identical interfaces as the STATISTICA.Application
library. Any existing code that uses the Application object can be replaced with the Library object.
The main restriction is that the STATISTICA UI features are not available from the Library version.
Therefore, in the example above, if the Application object was instantiated as a new
STATISTICA.LibraryClass, it would not be possible to make the object visible (and show the STATISTICA
interface).
The Library version of STATISTICA is loaded in process, which means accessing its COM interfaces is
more efficient than using the Application version of the object (which is loaded out of process). Since it is
loaded in process, multiple versions of the library cannot be instantiated. Normally, you would only
instantiate one Library object or one Application object in your program.

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Australia: StatSoft Pacific Pty Ltd.
Brazil: StatSoft South America
Bulgaria: StatSoft Bulgaria Ltd.
Czech Rep.: StatSoft Czech Rep. s.r.o.
China: StatSoft China

2300 E. 14th St.

Tulsa, OK 74104

France: StatSoft France

Germany: StatSoft GmbH
Hungary: StatSoft Hungary Ltd.
India: StatSoft India Pvt. Ltd.
Israel: StatSoft Israel Ltd.

USA

(918) 749-1119

Italy: StatSoft Italia srl

Japan: StatSoft Japan Inc.
Korea: StatSoft Korea
Netherlands: StatSoft Benelux BV
Norway: StatSoft Norway AS

Fax: (918) 749-2217

[email protected]

Poland: StatSoft Polska Sp. z o.o.

Portugal: StatSoft Ibrica Lda
Russia: StatSoft Russia
Spain: StatSoft Ibrica Lda

www.statsoft.com

S. Africa: StatSoft S. Africa (Pty) Ltd.

Sweden: StatSoft Scandinavia AB
Taiwan: StatSoft Taiwan
UK: StatSoft Ltd.

Threading
Both the Library and Application versions of STATISTICA use the single threaded apartment model.
Multiple threads accessing an instance of the STATISTICA COM interface will queue until previous
requests are processed. The architecture of STATISTICA is best suited to process requests from one
thread at a time.

Optimum performance of the library version occurs when accessed from an STA. Without it, COM calls
must marshal across threads. This is immaterial for using the Application object where all calls must be
marshaled out of process.
Creating New STATISTICA Documents
When creating a STATISTICA document such as a new Spreadsheet or Workbook object, you should not
instantiate a new instance of that document class. For example, for spreadsheets there is a
STATISTICA.SpreadsheetClass that you can use from .NET as shown in the example below:

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Bulgaria: StatSoft Bulgaria Ltd.
Czech Rep.: StatSoft Czech Rep. s.r.o.
China: StatSoft China

2300 E. 14th St.

Tulsa, OK 74104

France: StatSoft France

Germany: StatSoft GmbH
Hungary: StatSoft Hungary Ltd.
India: StatSoft India Pvt. Ltd.
Israel: StatSoft Israel Ltd.

USA

(918) 749-1119

Italy: StatSoft Italia srl

Japan: StatSoft Japan Inc.
Korea: StatSoft Korea
Netherlands: StatSoft Benelux BV
Norway: StatSoft Norway AS

Fax: (918) 749-2217

[email protected]

Poland: StatSoft Polska Sp. z o.o.

Portugal: StatSoft Ibrica Lda
Russia: StatSoft Russia
Spain: StatSoft Ibrica Lda

www.statsoft.com

S. Africa: StatSoft S. Africa (Pty) Ltd.

Sweden: StatSoft Scandinavia AB
Taiwan: StatSoft Taiwan
UK: StatSoft Ltd.

Figure 7 The wrong way to instantiate a STATISTICA document object.

Instead, you should use the corresponding STATISTICA.Application object methods. In the case of
spreadsheets, there is an Application.Spreadsheets.New method you can use.
:

Figure 8 The correct way to instantiate a STATISTICA document object.

Failure to use the Application object methods to create STATISTICA documents could cause extra
STATISTICA instances to be created unintentionally.
Setting Properties with Parameters in .NET
C# does not support properties with parameters other than indexers. An example is the
Spreadsheet.VariableName property, which is used to get/set variable names in a spreadsheet. In
languages such as VB/VB.NET, you can access the properties with parameters directly.

Figure 9 - An SVB example of using a property that needs a parameter.

In C# however, you must use the get_ and set_ accessor methods to accomplish this.

Figure 10 - A C# example of using a property that needs a parameter.

No integer Conversion to Boolean in C#
C# does not allow implicit or explicit conversion from int to bool. By convention, most STATISTICA
analytic routines use int parameters as Booleans. This enables adding new states easily. In languages
such as SVB, you can set these properties to True/False, but C# will not allow a Boolean value to be
assigned to an integer data type.

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Australia: StatSoft Pacific Pty Ltd.
Brazil: StatSoft South America
Bulgaria: StatSoft Bulgaria Ltd.
Czech Rep.: StatSoft Czech Rep. s.r.o.
China: StatSoft China

2300 E. 14th St.

Tulsa, OK 74104

France: StatSoft France

Germany: StatSoft GmbH
Hungary: StatSoft Hungary Ltd.
India: StatSoft India Pvt. Ltd.
Israel: StatSoft Israel Ltd.

USA

(918) 749-1119

Italy: StatSoft Italia srl

Japan: StatSoft Japan Inc.
Korea: StatSoft Korea
Netherlands: StatSoft Benelux BV
Norway: StatSoft Norway AS

Fax: (918) 749-2217

[email protected]

Poland: StatSoft Polska Sp. z o.o.

Portugal: StatSoft Ibrica Lda
Russia: StatSoft Russia
Spain: StatSoft Ibrica Lda

www.statsoft.com

S. Africa: StatSoft S. Africa (Pty) Ltd.

Sweden: StatSoft Scandinavia AB
Taiwan: StatSoft Taiwan
UK: StatSoft Ltd.

This can be problematic when copying recorded analysis macros and adding them to the C# code. The
recommended way to work around this is to define constant integers that represent True and False.
const int True = 1;
const int False = 0;
Default Parameters in C#
Default parameters dont default in C#. When calling a method, you must always specify all parameters.
In C# you can pass the parameter Type.Missing, which is equivalent to omitting the parameter in
languages such as VB/VB.NET.
Garbage Collection in .NET
In languages such as VB 6 and SVB, garbage collection is deterministic. When all references to an object
are released, the object is immediately removed from memory. However, in .NET, garbage collection is
only performed when necessary as part of a garbage collection process. Setting an object equal to
nothing just flags the object for later garbage collection. In situations where you need deterministic
releasing of the object, it is possible to force the objects release by using the ReleaseComObject
method. Calling ReleaseComObject decrements a COM objects reference count directly.

In the example above, the ReleaseComObject method is called in a loop that executes until the value
returned equals 0. This is because the ReleaseComObject method decrements the reference count by
one, so if the reference count was greater than 1 to begin with, you need to call the method multiple times
in order to release all references.

U.S. Headquarters: StatSoft, Inc.

Australia: StatSoft Pacific Pty Ltd.
Brazil: StatSoft South America
Bulgaria: StatSoft Bulgaria Ltd.
Czech Rep.: StatSoft Czech Rep. s.r.o.
China: StatSoft China

2300 E. 14th St.

Tulsa, OK 74104

France: StatSoft France

Germany: StatSoft GmbH
Hungary: StatSoft Hungary Ltd.
India: StatSoft India Pvt. Ltd.
Israel: StatSoft Israel Ltd.

USA

(918) 749-1119

Italy: StatSoft Italia srl

Japan: StatSoft Japan Inc.
Korea: StatSoft Korea
Netherlands: StatSoft Benelux BV
Norway: StatSoft Norway AS

Fax: (918) 749-2217

[email protected]

Poland: StatSoft Polska Sp. z o.o.

Portugal: StatSoft Ibrica Lda
Russia: StatSoft Russia
Spain: StatSoft Ibrica Lda

www.statsoft.com

S. Africa: StatSoft S. Africa (Pty) Ltd.

Sweden: StatSoft Scandinavia AB
Taiwan: StatSoft Taiwan
UK: StatSoft Ltd.