Alias list

Lists the COM aliases. To edit one - select it and click Edit button, then edit the class ID and click update. To delete an alias select it and click Remove. See also What are the COM aliases below.

Alias name

Specify the alias name. The COM alias acts like a ProgID but you have the opportunity to specify it here. When using Server.CreateObject and OBJECT tags in ALP the alias list will be checked first and if the ProgID used as parameter is found here the object determined by the specified Class ID will be created.

Class ID

Specify the COM Class ID to be associated with the alias. How to learn the component Class ID? First see if its documentation contains that information. If not use some utility like OLE View or check the registry manually.

What are the COM aliases

When using Server.CreateObject or OBJECT tags you are used to specify ProgID of the object created. However in ALP you can also specify the ClassID for the object such as {94A837CE-193F-11D5-999C-0040332BA2EA} for VarDictionary object for example. This is very important in case you are building pure autorun application. In case of autorun (run without installation) the ProgIDs of the objects may be not known for the local system because the corresponding DLL is not registered in the system registry. In this case you must use the ClassID and not the ProgID of the object. To avoid this and make the code more readable you can set up aliases which will act just like the ProgIDs in the ALP application settings. They map the ClassID of an object to its ClassID. In most cases you will probably prefer aliases mathcing the popular progID for the object but you can specify whatever you like - for example a short name. As this feature works in autorun and non-autorun mode you can ensure that the COM objects used in your application are always creatable (no matter how the application runs) by configuring and using aliases for them. If you plan to run the application from a CD not installing it first, you will need also to make sure the ClassIDs mapped here are listed in the alpframe.cfg file. This file informs ALPFrame which DLLs and which objects from them should be loaded in memory and temporarily rgistered with COM.

For more information about the details and autorun limitations see the ALPFrame documentation.