Accessing pkg info from C/C++

Question

The Solaris package database contains important per-package information which is rather useful to access from within an application. Is there any API to do this? The guide at http://docs.sun.com, "Application Packaging Developer's Guide" does not discuss one.
As an example, consider an application suite which needs to refer to its install location for config info or storing logs. Using pkginfo(1) and pkgparam(1) one can see where the package's base install dir is (ex: 'pkgparam SUNWvts BASEDIR' returns '/opt' on my system) located. But can I do the same within my application? What are the perferred mechanisms for my applications to otherwise know where their 'BASDEDIR' is? It would seem that the /var/sadm/pkg repository is a good place to start.
Perhaps a more general question: In providing an application suite, does the pkgadd family of commands remain the preferred method of packaging and delivering s/w? Is this true for Solaris9 and whatever lies beyond? To my understanding, the answer would be 'yes'. Are there other good alternatives recommended by Sun and/or the UNIX community in general? (as in, yes I could write my own hack at one, but would prefer not to!) I don't know, but would like to.

Answer 1

Just out of curiosity, what would you do with it if you had it?
The set of ones and zeroes has little or no meaning without knowing the starting rowid that the particular index entry points to. In a bit mapped index, there will almost certainly be multiple index entries for a single value (e.g 'M') in the bitmap, since it is unlikely that a single index entry could hold enough bits to reflect all the rows in a table big enough to be worth creating a bitmapped index on.
John