DDE Shares

DDE shares are a machine resource. They are similar to file shares because they are used to control access to a resource. With file shares, the resource is a file. With DDE shares, the resource is dynamically exchanged data. The type of data exchanged is determined by the server application that supplies the data and the client application that requests the data.

The server calls the NDdeShareAdd function to create the DDE share, which is stored in the DDE share database manager (DSDM).

The client starts the DDE conversation by connecting to the DDE share. The client must call the DdeInitialize function to initialize DDEML and call the DdeConnect function to connect to the DDE share. In the DdeConnect call, the client specifies the service name

\\<ComputerName>\NDDE$ 

where <ComputerName> is the name of the computer running the server application. The NDDE$ indicates that the topic provided to DdeConnect is the DDE share name on the remote computer named <ComputerName>.

There are three types of DDE shares: old style, new style, and static. It is typical to support only the static type. The names of static shares follow the convention <ShareName>$.