You can develop C or C++ applications that access the SQL Anywhere server using the SQL Anywhere embedded SQL interface. The command line database tools are examples of applications developed in this manner.

Embedded SQL is a database programming interface for the C and C++ programming languages. It consists of SQL statements intermixed with (embedded in) C or C++ source code. These SQL statements are translated by a SQL preprocessor into C or C++ source code, which you then compile.

At runtime, embedded SQL applications use a SQL Anywhere interface library called DBLIB to communicate with a database server. DBLIB is a dynamic link library (DLL) or shared object on most platforms.

SQL Anywhere provides two flavors of embedded SQL. Static embedded SQL is simpler to use, but is less flexible than dynamic embedded SQL.