General Introduction to Statistica Visual Basic

  • What is Statistica Visual Basic (SVB)?
    The industry standard Statistica Visual Basic language (integrated into Statistica) offers incomparably more than just a supplementary application programming language (that can be used to write custom extensions). Statistica Visual Basic takes full advantage of the object model architecture of Statistica and allows you to access programmatically every aspect and virtually every detail of the functionality of the program. Even the most complex analyses and graphs can be recorded into Visual Basic macros and later be run repeatedly or edited and used as building blocks of other applications. Statistica Visual Basic adds an arsenal of more than 11,000 new functions to the standard comprehensive syntax of Microsoft Visual Basic, thus comprising one of the largest and richest development environments available.
  • What are some of the applications of SVB?
    There are countless applications for Statistica Visual Basic ranging from recording simple macros to automate routine tasks, to the development of large scale, powerful applications that take full advantage of advanced technologies offered in Statistica. The following is a selection of examples.
  • I know nothing about Visual Basic or programming; where do I start?
    Visual Basic is a powerful industry standard language that will allow you to develop custom programs using the features of many (compatible) standard application programs, such as Microsoft's office programs (Word, Excel, Access, etc.), and of course Statistica. Depending on your aspirations as a programmer, you may want to pursue a more systematic approach to learn the language or start by modifying ready examples, to suit your particular needs.
  • How do I access SVB?
  • What does a simple SVB program look like?
  • What is meant by the term "object model?"
    The power of Visual Basic in general, and of Statistica Visual Basic in particular, derives from its ability to access the features of various programs that support the Visual Basic language. For example, you can write a program that produces a results spreadsheet via Statistica and pastes that spreadsheet into a Microsoft Word document and a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. That same program can then access individual cells in the spreadsheet, either in Microsoft Excel or Statistica, format those cells so that the contents of some cells are displayed in a different color (e.g., significant results are shown in yellow), and save all results (the document, spreadsheet, and Excel spreadsheet) to a disk. In this case you would access from a single Visual Basic program features in three different applications: Statistica, Microsoft Word, and Microsoft Excel.
  • What are properties, what are methods?