File I/O in the JVM is controlled primarily through file-open operations. After a file has been opened successfully, additional I/O operations on the file are generally permitted. For security reasons, all file-open requests must be made with an absolute path to the physical file; soft links are not supported. Relative paths are converted to absolute paths before any file I/O operations are attempted. For this reason, it is not possible to set up the $SYBASE directory as a soft link. Doing so prevents the JVM from initializing because it cannot open files in $SYBASE/shared.
If a file-open operation does not conform to a specific set of rules, the file cannot open. File-open rules are based on:
Whether or not the file already exists
Whether or not the file is to be opened for read-only or read-write access
The location of the file to be opened
