Oracle obstructs system shutdown!!

I have come across a large problem. I don't know whether the solution (if there is one) is either in VB or in Oracle.

The situation is that one of our customers requires our system to shut itself down and re-boot the WinNT4 Workstation on which it resides at a certain hour every day automatically, i.e. without the presence of a user. Our system (developed in VB4E) runs in conjunction with Personal Oracle 7.3.3.0.0, and data is continuously analysed from the Db by the application.

The problem is that when we come to shut the system down we have come accross several set-backs:

1. If I force-shutdown the Oracle Db using (InitiateSystemShutdown("", "", 0, TRUE, TRUE)), I get an invalid page fault and the shutdown process STALLS at the "Please wait while your computer shuts down" screen.
2. The same thing happens if I use ExitWindowsEx(..).
3. For Oracle shutdown there is a command ("OSTOP73.EXE") that will shutdown the Db. However when I implement this (using WaitForSingleObject(..) as I have to wait for the Db to shutdown before proceding), I get a dialog box from Oracle stating that I obviously have some active connections to the Db. The dialog box requires input whether I want to abort the Db shutdown or rollback all the uncommited changes and shutdown.

So, all of the above problems do not allow the system to re-boot by either stalling the shutdown process (1 and 2 above), or requiring user input (3 above).

Specifically, No.3 is the closest I have gotten to making the shutdown process as clean as possible. But the user needs to be present which is not always possible. So here are my three questions:

1. Does anyone know how to bypass this dialog box?
2. Does anyone know any parameters that I can pass to the shutdown command, i.e. ("OSTOP73.EXE IMMEDIATE")?
3. Does anyone know if there are any SQL commands that shuts down the Db, without getting the dialog box?

Any answers would be greatly appreciated as my PC is in danger of accidentally dropping out of my window... :-)

Thanks in advance,

Marius Grigoriu

Marius_at_NoTrash.Mosquito.demon.co.uk
(Remove "NoTrash.") Received on Mon Sep 14 1998 - 11:40:46 CDT