Obba: A Java Object Handler for Spreadsheets (Excel and OpenOffice) - New Version 3.0

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Obba provides a bridge between spreadsheets and Java objects.

With Obba, you can use spreadsheets as GUIs for your Java libraries; turning your Java library to platform independent spreadsheet add-ins or, alternatively, turning your spreadsheet to a GUI/TestSuit of you Java code.

Compatible with Excel/Windows, OpenOffice/Win/Mac/Linux, LibreOffice/Win/Mac/Linux, NeoOffice/Mac.

Obbas main features are:

• Statefull access to almost all objects and methods running in a Java virtual machine via a fixed set of spread sheet functions.
• Client/server support: The Java virtual machine providing the add-in may run on the same computer or a remote computer - without any change to the spreadsheet.
• Loading of arbitrary jar or class files at runtime through a spreadsheet function.
• Instantiation of Java objects, storing the object reference under a given object label.
• Invocation of methods on objects referenced by their object handle, storing the handle to the result under a given object label.
• Asynchronous method invocation and tools for synchronization, turning your spreadsheet into a multi-threaded calculation tool.
• Allows arbitrary number of arguments for constructors or methods (avoids the limitation of the number of arguments for Excel worksheet functions).
• Serialization and de-serialization (save Serializable objects to a file, restore them any time later).
• All this through spreadsheet functions, without any additional line of code (no VBA needed, no additional Java code needed).

For a tutorial see Obba tutorial. In this tutorial you create a Java class and a spreadsheet to fetch Stock quotes from finance.yahoo.com.

For a more detailed introduction see Obba documentation and Obba home page.


Version 3.0.7 of Obba is a major revision and brings support for running the Java virtual machine references in the spreadsheet on a different machine.