Symbolic names of linked shared libraries (UNIX)

When the esql command links shared or thread-safe shared HCL Informix® libraries with your Informix ESQL/C application, it uses the symbolic names of these libraries. The symbolic names of the Informix shared libraries have the following formats:

A non-thread-safe shared Informix general library has a symbolic name of the form libxxx.yyy.
A thread-safe shared Informix general library has a symbolic name of the form libthxxx.yyy.

In these static-library names, xxx identifies the particular library and yyy is a platform-specific file extension that identifies shared library files.

Tip: To refer to a specific shared-library file, this publication often uses the file extension for the Sun UNIX operating system, the .so file extension. For the shared-library file extension that your UNIX operating system uses, see your UNIX operating system documentation.

When you install the Informix ESQL/C product, the installation script makes a symbolic link of the actual shared product library name to the file with the symbolic name. The following figure shows the format for the actual names of shared and thread-safe shared versions of Informix libraries.

Figure 1. Format of the Informix shared-library name

The following sample output shows the symbolic and actual names for the libos.a static library and the libos.so shared library (on a Sun platform):

%ls -l $INFORMIXDIR/esql/libos*
-rw-r--r--  1 informix   145424 Nov 8 01:40 libos.a
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root           11 Nov 8 01:40 libos.so -> iosls07a.so*

The esql command links the symbolic shared-library names with the Informix ESQL/C application. At runtime, Informix ESQL/C dynamically links the code for the shared Informix general library when the program requires the Informix general-library function.