Loading and unloading shared libraries

ABL provides several options for loading and unloading shared libraries. How this is done in ABL depends on how you access the shared library, either statically or dynamically. The following table compares these options for statically and dynamically accessed shared libraries.

Table 55. Loading and unloading shared libraries
If you want to ...	Static	Dynamic(Call object handle)
Load and unload a shared library each time you invoke it	PROCEDURE statement without the PERSISTENT option	call-object:PERSISTENT = FALSE or do not specify the attribute
Load a shared library and keep it loaded	PROCEDURE statement with the PERSISTENT option	call-object:PERSISTENT = TRUE
Manually unload a shared library	RELEASE EXTERNAL statement	RELEASE EXTERNAL statement