Oracle 8 external procedures (WinNT)

I'm having a problem using the external procedure facilities of an Oracle 8.0.4 database to pass calls out to a proprietary DLL. I can only describe the behaviour of the DLL as ``session based'' in that the DLL contains hidden state information, and to function properly all calls must be made to the DLL instance that any previous call was made to. I'm not sure that sentence makes sense, I can't think of a more acceptable way to phrase it.

The calls to the DLL execute successfully, but it seems that each call I pass out through extproc creates it's own instance of the DLL, thus losing all of the state information that's necessary for normal operation. The documentation says that extproc is only spawned once, but it definately looks like each external call from the database is executing in its own little world, they aren't going through the same DLL. I'm looking for any information here. Just confirmation that this is how extproc is supposed to work would be one thing. Any suggestions on how to alter the behaviour of exptroc to make it create only one instance of the DLL would be most gratefully received.

If I'm missing some vital piece of information that might help you provide a solution, please let me know.

Cheers,

Chris.

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