Open Client provides customer applications, third-party products, and other Sybase products with the interfaces needed to communicate with Adaptive Server and Open Server.
Open Client can be thought of as comprising two components, programming interfaces and network services.
Open Client provides two core programming interfaces for writing client applications: Client-Library and DB-Library.
Open Client Client-Library/C is described in this book. The Client-Library interface supports server-managed cursors and other features in System 10 and later versions of the product line.
Open Client DB-Library is a separate API that supports earlier Open Client applications. DB-Library is documented in the Open Client DB-Library/C Reference Manual.
Client-Library programs also depend on CS-Library, which provides routines that are used in both Client-Library and Server-Library applications. Client-Library applications can also use Bulk-Library routines to facilitate high-speed data transfer.
CS-Library and Bulk-Library are both included in the Open Client product. These libraries are described further in the section titled “Shared common libraries.”
Open Client network services include Sybase Net-Library, which provides support for specific network protocols such as TCP/IP and DECnet. The Net-Library interface is invisible to application programmers. However, on some platforms an application may need a different Net-Library driver for different system network configurations. Depending on your host platform, the Net-Library driver is specified either by the system’s Sybase configuration, or when you compile and link your programs.
Instructions for driver configuration are in the Open Client and Open Server Configuration Guide for Microsoft Windows, and Open Client and Open Server Configuration Guide for UNIX. Instructions for building Client-Library programs are in the Open Client and Open Server Programmer's Supplement for Microsoft Windows and the Open Client and Open Server Programmer's Supplement for UNIX.
