Data Types

The following data types are used by Microsoft® Certificate Server interface methods.

Microsoft Visual Basic®	Java	C++
int	short	---
long	int	LONG
BSTR	java.lang.String	BSTR
DATE	double	DATE
VARIANT	com.ms.Variant	VARIANT

VARIANT type variables have a type tag field vt that indicates the data type of the data. VARIANT type return values are returned by methods with the type tag field set to the data type of the return value. VARIANT type input parameters in a method call must have the type tag field set by the application to one of the supported values. The correspondence of parameter types to data types is as follows.

Parameter Type	Data Type
PROPTYPE_LONG	VT_I2 or VT_I4
PROPTYPE_DATE	VT_DATE
PROPTYPE_BINARY	VT_BSTR or (VT_BSTR \| VT_BYREF)
PROPTYPE_STRING	VT_BSTR or (VT_BSTR \| VT_BYREF)

The following example written in C++ shows how the type tag field could be initialized for a call to the ICertServerPolicy::SetCertificateExtension method:

HRESULT hr;
BSTR strExtensionName = SysAllocString("2.29.38.4");
VARIANT varExt;
varExt.vt = VT_BSTR;    // initialize type tag field
varExt.bstrVal = SysAllocString("http://UrlTest.htm");

hr = pICertServerPolicy->SetCertificateExtension(
    strExtensionName,      // extension name
    PROPTYPE_STRING,
    EXTENSION_CRITICAL_FLAG,
    &varExt);

// Use the strAttributeValue ...

// free it when done
if (NULL != strExtensionName)
{
    SysFreeString(strExtensionName);
}
VariantClear(&varExt);