To create applications that run outside Oasis montaj, developers use the External API, which consists of a set of redistributable files that must be installed with your application. Redistributing your application and the 3^rd party components can usually be achieved fairly easily by making use of the Windows Installer XML (WIX) Toolset or some other install creation utility but this is outside the scope of this guide.

Introduction

The recommended way to create an application (which only makes use of unlicensed functionality) that can operate completely independent of an Oasis montaj installation is to install all the files and GeosoftFiles directory in <Program Files>\Geosoft\GX Developer\apps\redist\bin right next to the binaries that would be making use of the API externally. Although it might be possible to remove some files that might not be used it cannot reliably be supported, nor will any guidelines be provided on how to do this.

It is also possible to make use of of an Oasis montaj or Oasis montaj Viewer installation to reduce the application footprint and make use of licensed functionality. To do this the GeosoftFiles directory above can be omitted and a geosoft.key file then placed next to the applications and other files containing a single text line with the name of the application as found in the registry (e.g. “Oasis montaj”). See the Registry section below for more info on what this means.

In addition to these files your application will need to install and/or check for the following 3^rd party redistributables. Note that this is not necessary when making use of an Oasis montaj installation as described in the paragraph above.

No registry settings of any kind are required to be setup, but the directory where the files are installed should be writable to the Windows user as temporary files and a user folder will be created underneath.

We can also recommend the Depends.exe utility for debugging any dll dependency problems (see http://www.dependencywalker.com/ ) that might arise.  

Registry

Although no registry settings are required to create external applications, we do recommend that you register specific directories for your application if you want to control where temporary files and user directories will be located. During execution, applications using the external API will create log and temp files in the current working directory. To have the Log and temp files sent to a different directory, it is required that you create a key file for your application. This file, called geosoft.key must be in the same directory as your EXE. It contains the name of your application {MyApp}. With this key file, the Create_GEO method will look in the registry under the following key for settings:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Geosoft\{MyApp}\Environment

GEOTEMP      Where all temp files will be placed.

GEOSOFT      Where the contents of the GeosoftFiles directory is (which can be omitted if next to the application).

GEOSOFT2    Where all user files will be placed.

This will force all temp and log file to be created in the GEOTEMP directory. Please note that the key names can conflict with Geosoft keys as well as other developer keys so please use descriptive names. 

Licensing

The functions available in this API are the same ones available under the GX programming interface for Oasis montaj. All the [_public] methods are provided free and can used by anyone without restriction by Geosoft. However, [_licensed] and [_extended] methods do require that Oasis montaj be installed with an appropriate license. The “app” methods are a special group that may or may not be provided outside Oasis montaj. If they are provided, they may not have the same behaviour as they would if run inside Oasis montaj.