VBScript in a Nutshell

What VBScript Is Used For: Gluing Together Objects

We’ve outlined the four major areas in which VBScript is used, but if we were to look at how scripts are written in each of these environments, we’d quickly note far more differences than similarities. (Because of this, we’ve devoted a separate chapter to each area in which VBScript is commonly used.) Yet this is misleading. If we take a more high-level view, we can see that the role of VBScript and the role of the environment in which its scripts are run are broadly similar, regardless of the environment’s unique features.

Typically, scripting languages are described as “glue” languages. That is, they are used to glue things together. That means that the glue itself does relatively little—it simply binds the rest of the script together. The “things” that the scripting language binds together are components or objects—that is, the objects exposed by the environment for which the script is being written (like ASP, MSIE, Outlook, or WSH), as well as objects that are exposed by external applications, environments, or components (such as ActiveX Data Objects, Collaboration Data Objects, Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, or custom components created in Visual Basic). A map of a single high-level object (such as the Microsoft Word application, for instance, which is represented by the Application object) along with its child objects is known as an object model .

One type of object model that’s particularly suitable for scripting is shown ...