Calling JMP from Java with OLE automation

Question

I have a potential Pro customer asking for an example of calling JMP from Java. I've looked at all of our OLE automation examples available and don't see anything from Java. Can this be done, and, if so, does anyone have example syntax or reference they can point me to? Thanks!

Daniel_Valente · Answer

Thanks, Jeff.

For the record, I 100% agree with you that we should not be promoting JMP this way. I just wanted to add the extra information I received re: this prospect request and place it in this thread to keep a record and to provide information to the greater SE community the next time this question comes up.

Best,

Dan

Jeff_Perkinson · Answer

Hi Dan, et. al.,

This is not a use case we want to promote.

JMP is not a compute engine. It isn't engineered or tested to be used non-interactively this way. More importantly, in almost all cases, if you want to do this in any enterprise-scale, production way, you will be violating the terms of our license.

The use case you describe is fundamentally different from the Matlab case.

In the Matlab case, we are doing to calling of Matlab, which is engineered, built and tested to be called this way.

In the use case that you and Jerry describe (and Jerry described further in a phone call with me) the user wants to create an external application and call JMP to do analysis and return results. That's very different.

We should all be very careful in any situation like this. Do not promote using JMP like this.

-Jeff

Daniel_Valente · Answer

Jeff, Jerry --

Catherine gave me some more information on the use case here. The customer is considering JMP Pro for use with a program they develop for the oil and gas industry. As I understand it, they do not want to write their own analytics, but potentially call JMP or JMP Pro to perform statistical analysis on data generated by/through their program.

I see this similar to how I would execute and run MATLAB code from JMP, send data from JMP, execute an algorithm and then return results to JMP for Profiling, Graphing etc.

I think I am understanding their use case, right, Jerry?

A response from Eric Hill was helpful, and worth including here as I think this question will/does come up fairly often:

"Regarding your question about whether somebody could use Java to automate JMP:  As I mentioned on the phone, the only way would be if some third party had made a Java library for doing OLE/COM automation.  I Bing’d it and found this Stack Overflow article:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6679810/is-there-ole-automation-in-java

So it looks like are a couple choices – JACOB, which it sounds like may not be actively maintained, and JNA, which may be better maintained.

This is not something we’ve tested or could say that we support, but it is a possibility."