[R] R and DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange)

[Gabor Grothendieck]

On 7/19/06, Philippe Grosjean <phgrosjean at sciviews.org> wrote:
> Richard M. Heiberger wrote:
> > I am thrilled to learn tcltk2 has DDE capability.
> > It is the piece I have been needing to make ESS work directly
> > with the RGUI on Windows.  GNU emacs on Windows has a ddeclient,
> > but no access to COM.  So if R, or tcltk2 talking in both directions to R,
> > has a ddeserver, all should be possible.  I will be reading the documentation
> > closely in a few weeks to tie it together and then intend to make it happen.
> >
> > Do you, or any other list member, have a sense of the size, complexity, ease,
> > magnitude of the task I just defined?  Any advice as I get started on it?
> >
> > Rich
>
> Well, to be honest, DDE is an old exchange protocol (the first one
> proposed by M$ in Windows version 1 or 2). It is not that reliable. In
> practice, when the communication is working fine, you have no problems
> with it. But if something fails in either the server or the client, you
> got a very bad behaviour sometimes.

There is a good discussion in this DDE FAQ of when DDE would
be preferred and when COM would be:

http://www.angelfire.com/biz/rhaminisys/ddeinfo.html#DDEpreferred