MATLAB COM Builder

Building a Deployable Application

Using MATLAB COM Builder to create a COM component is a simple process requiring a sequence of four steps. For details see

• Creating a Project
• Managing M-Files and MEX-Files
• Building a Project
• Packaging and Distributing the Component

This section references various menus provided by the COM Builder graphical user interface (GUI). For a full discussion of these menus, see Graphical User Interface.

Elements of a COM Builder Project

A project consists of all the elements necessary to build a deployable application using the MATLAB COM Builder. COM Builder components are COM objects accessible through Visual Basic, C++, or any other language that supports COM. COM is an acronym for Component Object Model, which is Microsoft's binary standard for object interoperability. Each COM object exposes one or more classes to the Visual Basic programming environment. Each class contains a set of functions called methods, corresponding to the original MATLAB functions included in the component's project.

Classes

When creating a component, you must additionally provide one or more class names. The component name represents the name of the DLL file to be created. A class name denotes the name of the class that performs a call on a specific method at run-time. The relationship between component name and class name, and which methods (MATLAB functions) go into a particular class, are purely organizational. As a general rule, when compiling many MATLAB functions, it helps to determine a scheme of function categories and to create a separate class for each category. The name of each class should be descriptive of what the class does.

Versions

MATLAB COM Builder components also support a simple versioning mechanism. A version number is attached to a given component. This number gets automatically built into the DLL file name and the system registry information. As a general rule, the first version of a component is 1.0 (the default value if none is chosen). Changes made to the component before deployment keep the same version number. After deployment, change the version number for all subsequent changes, so that you can easily manage the new and old versions. The system sees classes in different versions of the same component as distinct, even if they have the same name.

Overview

Creating a Project