Trying to run a program built on a later version of Linux

I'm currently running SuSE-7.3. I have engineering programs that prevent me from upgrading to SuSE-8.X at this time. I have another program that appears to have been built on a later version of Linux. It claims to need: libc.so.6 (GLIBC_2.3) ld.so says libstdc++.so.5 needs it. Near as I can tell, the libc.so.6 I have is GLIBC_2.2. Is this a system specific library? (i.e. I can't upgrade it w/out upgrading the system?) -Gerry linux@darykon.cet.com