Introduction

The Dynamic Data Exchange protocol is a method of inter-process communication developed by Microsoft to establish communication between Windows applications running on the same computer. The DDE API is available for Windows computers to create a means of communication between Microsoft Excel and TWS or IB Gateway. This allows users to make calls to the standard API library using Visual Basic.

The Excel DDE API has the full functionality offered by the Trader Workstation API implemented via a DDE socket bridge that uses the open source Java – DDE interoperability library JDDE. This means the DDE API offering is built utilizing both Java and VB together in order to create a complete Excel offering to the standard put in place by Microsoft.