19 OLE Automation
The paperless office is about as likely as the paperless bathroom.—Joe Celko
SQL Server provides a set of stored procedures whose purpose is to work with automation (formerly known as OLE automation) objects. Automation provides a language-independent means of controlling and using objects exposed by other programs. For example, you can use automation to instruct Word to spell check a document or Excel to compute a formula. A good number of programs and tools expose pieces of themselves to the outside world through automation objects. If you have access to an automation controller, you can make use of those objects to manipulate the host application. Fortunately, you do have access to such a controller—SQL Server’s ODSOLE ...
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