Enterprise editions of BarTender (including Enterprise and RFID Enterprise editions) can be controlled from within your other applications using advanced features especially designed for software integration. That means accounting, manufacturing, inventory, shipping and other supply-chain applications can easily access BarTender's powerful label-printing features. In fact, your users don't even have to know that it's BarTender printing the labels.

Depending on your goals and the capabilities of your other programs, there are three basic ways to control BarTender:

• ActiveX Automation
• Command-Line Interface
• Commander: The Flexible Middleware Alternative

Comparing Enterprise Editions with Other BarTender Editions

The ActiveX Automation and Commander methods for controlling BarTender are only supported by the Enterprise editions. In addition, the Enterprise editions support integration using a Command Line Interface.  (The Professional edition supports a very limited subset of the Command Line Interface intended mainly for running BarTender from a Windows folder icon.)

ActiveX Automation

Taking advantage of the latest in Microsoft's ActiveX integration technology, Enterprise editions can easily be controlled by other software programs. Numerous functions are available such as:

• Loading BarTender
• Specifying a label format
• Selecting data sources
• Specifying network printers
• Inquiring about BarTender's status, including jobs in progress

What Kinds of Applications Can Issue ActiveX Commands?

Most standard Windows development tools can issue ActiveX Automation commands, including:

• Visual Basic
• Visual C++ (and other versions of C for Windows)
• Power Builder
• Access
• and many more.

Many prewritten applications also provide an interface that gives users access to Windows' ActiveX capabilities. (Any application such as MS-Word or Excel that supports "Visual Basic for Applications" certainly will have that capability.)

Command-Line Interface

"Command Line" control of BarTender is available in the Enterprise editions of BarTender and uses less sophisticated software technology than ActiveX Automation. However, it still allows any program capable of issuing a "run program" command to load BarTender and launch print jobs. (The Professional edition of BarTender supports a very limited subset of the Command Line Interface intended mainly for running BarTender from a Windows folder icon.)

Sample Command Line

This is a sample command line for use inside of Visual Basic. It launches BarTender (if it´s not already running), loads a label format called "ucc-ean128.btw," and prints it:

Shell("bartend.exe /f=ucc-ean128.btw /p")

The "Shell" part is specific to Visual Basic and differs somewhat in other development environments. The part inside the quotes is the actual command line and will not change for other environments.

What Can I Do and Not Do Using Command Lines?

Among the available functions are:

• Load BarTender
• Select and load a label format
• Specify a data source to import label data from
• Execute a print job
• Exit BarTender
• Various other functions

Some capabilities not available when using command-line control instead of ActiveX Automation are:

• Direct control over selected options in certain dialogs.
• Loading multiple label designs without first closing ones that have already been opened.
• Asking BarTender questions, including its version number and whether or not a print job is in progress.
• The ability to specify label data directly (instead of having to export it to a file for BarTender to read).

Commander: The Flexible Middleware Alternative

Commander, an add-on utility included with the Enterprise Edition of BarTender, lets other applications control BarTender print jobs. By simply creating a data file, your other application gives you access to Commander's powerful integration capabilities. Commander is useful for controlling BarTender whenever:

• It's inconvenient or impossible to issue ActiveX commands from your current application or environment.
• You don't have access to your other application's source code.
• You're working with a non-Windows platform, such as Linux/UNIX, AIX or AS/400, and no means exist for directly transmitting the necessary command(s) to the Windows system running BarTender.
• You haven't worked with ActiveX before and you already know how to export data to text files.

How Commander Works

Using Commander, your other application makes labels by first generating a text file. Commander detects the file's arrival and then "wakes up" BarTender, which reads your data and prints your labels. This can be especially helpful on larger, enterprise networks where a non-Windows system is generating your label data and doesn't have direct access to your Windows applications.

E-mail Integration

As an alternative to file-based triggers and label data, Commander can also detect triggers and receive label data via e-mail.

Great for Windows-Only Systems Too!

Although Commander's full benefit is achieved when giving Windows capabilities to non-Windows applications, such cross-platform operation is not required. Commander is so easy to set up and use that some people use it in pure Windows environments so they don´t have to code even the simplest ActiveX Automation or Command-Line functions.