On Windows, dynamic builds result in two distinct objects: the import library and the DLL. For the Essential Tools Module library built in the 12d configuration, these would be:

To build your application, you link to the .lib version. To run your application, you use the .dll version as described in the next section.

On UNIX systems, there is no such division. The library build results in a single object with the shared object extension specific to the platform (libtls<ver>12d.so for the above case on Solaris). You both link to this object when building your application and use the object to run your application.