I'm using SSH for tunneling between a client machine and a server. The purpose of this tunnel is for secure DB transactions between a Windows application and a Linux MySQL 3 server.

On the Windows machine, I open a dos shell and do this to set up the tunnel:
ssh username@server.com -v -2 -N -f -L 3306:localhost:3306

Then I run my DB application.

What I'd like to do is set up the tunnel inside my application using some sort of API. Is SSH just a wrapper for this cygwin.dll file? If not, is there a ssh.dll file that has the same functionality as ssh.exe?

I would appreciate any insight you can give me.

SSH is a seperate program. It listens on a port, when it receives data on that port it opens a tunnel and passes it on.

How about just having your program fork and launch ssh?

If you want an API then openSSL might be what you are looking for.

You said OpenSSL. Did you mean OpenSSH? I'm confused...

OpenSSH and OpenSSL are two different applications. One is an open implementation of secure shell, while the other is an open implementation of secure sockets layer. You may want to go look at the OpenSSL engine to see if it suits your needs.

//moderator.note: even though the greater subject may be security, your question isn't security related, but more in the direction of programming/networking. Since it's also not related to the Linux side of things but deals with MICROS~1 I move it to /General.