In general, ActiveX control technology is a more powerful, flexible, and robust replacement for the VBX control standard. To comply with the COM standard, an ActiveX control instance must be placed in a
control container that handles events and specific user-interface functionality for the control. ABL supports this standard with the control-frame widget, a field-level widget and an associated control-frame COM object (which provides the actual control container support). For an overview of ActiveX controls, how they interact with ABL, and the requirements for using them in ABL, see
Introduction to External Program Interfaces
You can extend a OpenEdge application with numerous commercially available ActiveX controls. In ABL, you must use the AppBuilder at design time to create instances of ActiveX controls in your application. You can then write ABL code to reference ActiveX control properties and methods and to define event handlers that respond to ActiveX control events.
