Large Object Locator Functions

Large Object Locator provides a set of functions similar to UNIX I/O functions for manipulating large objects. You use the same functions regardless of how or where the underlying large object is stored.

The Large Object Locator functions can be divided into four main categories:

• Basic functions for creating, opening, closing, deleting, and reading from and writing to large objects.
• Client functions for creating, opening, and deleting client files and for copying large objects to and from client files. After you open a client file, you can use the basic functions to read from and write to the file.
• Utility functions for raising errors and converting errors to their SQL state equivalents.
• Smart large object functions for copying smart large objects to files and to other smart large objects.

There are three interfaces to the Large Object Locator functions:

• An API library
• An ESQL/C library
• An SQL interface

All Large Object Locator functions are implemented as API library functions. You can call Large Object Locator functions from user-defined routines within an application you build.

All Large Object Locator functions, except lld_error_raise(), are implemented as ESQL/C functions. You can use the Large Object Locator functions to build ESQL/C applications.

A limited set of the Large Object Locator functions are implemented as user-defined routines that you can execute within SQL statements. See SQL Interface for a list of the Large Object Locator functions that you can execute directly in SQL statements.

Functions, describes all the Large Object Locator functions and the three interfaces in detail.