Programming Interfaces Guide

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Chapter 1: Programming Interface Overview

About This Book

About This Manual

Subject

This manual describes the programming interfaces available for Adaptive Server Anywhere.

Audience

This manual is intended for application developers writing programs that work directly with one of the Adaptive Server Anywhere interfaces.

You do not need to read this manual if you are using a development tool, such as Powersoft PowerBuilder or Power++, which has its own database interface on top of ODBC.

Adaptive Server Anywhere documentation

The Adaptive Server Anywhere documentation consists of the following books:

New Features and Upgrading
Intended for all users of Adaptive Server Anywhere, this book describes the following:
- New features in Adaptive Server Anywhere 6.0
- Behavior changes from previous releases
- Upgrade procedures..
User's Guide
Intended for all users of Adaptive Server Anywhere, including database administrators and application developers, this book describes in depth all aspects of how to use Adaptive Server Anywhere.
Programming Interfaces
Intended for application developers writing programs that directly access the ODBC, Embedded SQL, or Open Client interfaces, this book describes how to develop applications for Adaptive Server Anywhere.

This book is not required for users of Application Development tools with built-in ODBC support, such as Powersoft PowerBuilder or Power++.
Reference Manual
A full reference to Adaptive Server Anywhere. This book describes the database server, the administration utilities, the SQL language, and error messages.
Data Replication with SQL Remote
A complete description of the SQL Remote replication system.
Quick Reference
A handy printed booklet with complete SQL syntax and other key reference material in a concise format.

The format of these books (printed or online) may depend on the product in which you obtained Adaptive Server Anywhere.

Depending on which package you have purchased, you may have additional books describing other components of your product.

Documentation conventions

This section lists the typographic and graphical conventions used in this documentation.

Syntax conventions

The following conventions are used in the SQL syntax descriptions:

Keywords
All SQL keywords are shown in UPPER CASE. However, SQL keywords are case insensitive, so you can enter keywords in any case you wish; SELECT is the same as Select which is the same as select.
Placeholders
Items that must be replaced with appropriate identifiers or expressions are shown in italics .
Continuation
Lines beginning with ... are a continuation of the statements from the previous line.
Repeating items
Lists of repeating items are shown with an element of the list followed by an ellipsis (three dots). One or more list elements are allowed. If more than one is specified, they must be separated by commas.
Optional portions
Optional portions of a statement are enclosed by square brackets. For example, ...
```
RELEASE SAVEPOINT [ savepoint-name ] 
```
... indicates that the savepoint-name is optional. The square brackets should not be typed.
Options
When none or only one of a list of items must be chosen, the items are separated by vertical bars and the list enclosed in square brackets.

For example, ...
```
[ ASC | DESC ]
```
... indicates that you can choose one of ASC, DESC, or neither. The square brackets should not be typed.
Alternatives
When precisely one of the options must be chosen, the alternatives are enclosed in curly braces. For example ...
```
QUOTES { ON | OFF }
```
... indicates that exactly one of ON or OFF must be provided. The braces should not be typed.

Typographic conventions

In addition to the syntax conventions, the documentation uses the following typographic conventions:

Item	Description
Code	SQL and program code is displayed in a mono-spaced (fixed-width) font
User entry	Text entered by the user is displayed in a bold sans serif typeface
new term	New terms introduced in the text are displayed in a bold serif typeface
emphasis	Emphasized words are displayed in italic
file names	File names are shown in italics.
database objects	Names of database objects, such as tables and procedures, are shown in bold.

Graphic icons

The following icons are used in this documentation:

Icon	Meaning
	A client application.
	A database server, such as Sybase Adaptive Server Anywhere or Adaptive Server Enterprise.
	An Adaptive Server Anywhere database server.
	A SQL Remote Message Agent
	A Sybase Replication Server.
	A Replication Agent. A replication agent is required for a database to act as a primary data site in Sybase Replication Server installations.

Installed files

The following terms are used throughout the manual:

Installation directory
The directory into which you install Adaptive Server Anywhere.
Executable directory
The executables and other files for each operating system are held in an executable subdirectory of the installation directory. This subdirectory has the following name:
- Windows NT and Windows 95
  win32
- UNIX
  bin
- Windows 3.x
  win
- OS/2
  os2
- Novell NetWare
  nlm

The sample database

There is a sample database included with Adaptive Server Anywhere. Many of the examples throughout the documentation use this sample database.

The sample database represents a small company. It contains internal information about the company (employees, departments, and financial data) as well as product information (products), sales information (sales orders, customers, and contacts), and financial information (fin_code, fin_data).

The following figure shows the tables in the sample database and how they are related to each other.

The sample database is held in a file named asademo.db, and is located in your installation directory.


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