A symbolic link on Unix is much like a shortcut on a Windows system. Often shortened to symlink and also known as a soft link. A symbolic link is a file that only contains the name of another file and points to that other file. On accessing a link, the Operating System follows the pointer to the other file and accesses its contents. The symbolic link will behave differently on different platforms.
Progress does not support the use of symbolic links nor are there plans to do so currently.
If a multi-volume database is created using PROSTRCT utilities then a symbolic link path cannot be used to connect to the database, for example. This is because the .db file (or Control Area) then has absolute path names (as opposed to relative paths) hard coded within it. When the database is accessed, it checks to see whether the names within the .db file are the same as the directory containing the files. Using symbolic links adds a further layer of administration to the configuration and thus potentially represents a further point of failure.
Progress does not support the use of symbolic links. Do not use them to access a Progress OpenEdge database.
