Carapace

Carapace Overview

The Carapace Communications Suite is a toolkit which provides
  • a simple way to build and combine COM components -- this gives you control over a large number of ready-made components on Microsoft platforms;

  • a highly configurable and robust communications framework -- to allow systems to be linked across wide areas;

  • a powerful data-mapping capability -- to allow different systems to be 'glued' together.

Click here to see how to start Carapace.

COM - the Component Object Model

COM is used on Microsoft platforms to allow components to communicate. Using COM you can combine components like spreadsheets, e-mail systems etc. into an application to suit your individual needs. COM is extremely powerful, but is rather hard to use.

Carapace script has excellent support for COM - allowing you easily to create your components and to integrate other third-party ones.

Communications

To work together, systems need to communicate. COM provides one way on Microsoft platforms. There are a host of methods by which computer systems communicate, and Carapace provides a consistent and extensible communications framework.

Communication with Carapace is based on the idea of a stack of modules to create a robust and configurable communications channel. These stacks can be made 'smart' so that complex objects may be sent and received down the pipes.

Data Mapping

At the heart of the Carapace Communications Suite is a powerful script language for manipulating data. This language is a simple version of Lisp with extensions to support objects. In addition, Carapace provides COM access to allow you to map data in the language of your choice.

The Suite comes with a variety of built-in classes and functions. If the functionality you require is not already supplied by these, then you can define your own objects and functions.

Further Reading

contents pointers into the Carapace documentation

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