About Software Storage Objects (SSO)

A Software Storage Object (SSO) is the fundamental building-block of a product. In the SCO OpenServer architecture, SSOs are the software ``components'' that comprise the product. Products consist of one or more components; components consist of one or more packages. See ``About the new product structure'' for more information.

A Software Storage Object:

• is a basic unit of software functionality and is always packaged and distributed as a whole.

• has a name and version number.

• contains private, internal data.

• has a well-defined external interface, defined by the developer.

A component is organized into a hierarchical tree of ``packages''. A package is the smallest unit of software that can be installed or removed. Each package can contain other packages or files; the parent of each package is either another package or the top-level component. See ``Product structure''.

The files in the component are grouped into a read-only software storage ``object'' in a directory subtree under the /opt hierarchy, /opt/K/VendorCode/ComponentCode/ComponentVersion. This directory is known as the SSOroot of the component. For example, the SSOroot of the WServer component is /opt/K/SCO/WServer/1.0.0. For a description of the elements of SSOroot, see ``Component identifiers''.

The CDMT tools arrange the distribution files into the SSO hierarchy and create custom-installable SSO archives. See ``Creating and populating the SSO tree'' and ``Creating custom-installable SSO archives''.

During the installation phases, custom(ADM) places the shared files in the SSOroot directory and copies the non-shared to the /var hierarchy in client's local file space /var/opt/K/VendorCode/ComponentCode/ComponentVersion. See ``Software management phases''.

See also:

• ``Advantages of using SSOs''

• ``Software storage objects''

• ``Product file locations''

• ``Determining SSO file attributes''

• hierarchy(M)