Re: Calling executables from within PL/SQL

Ola Nissen wrote in message <38aa826f.0_at_d2o61.telia.com>...
>does anyone know if there is a possibility to start a program (an
 executable
>on the server running the database) from within PL/SQL?

You can do this one of two ways, either via DBMS Pipes (this requires a custom developed pipe server process on the server platform), or via something like a cron job (Unix sh script) that regulary polls a table for instructions and then executes them.

>Also, is there any possibility to use COM objects from within PL/SQL?

NO!!!!

COM is a -Microsoft- "standard". Or plainly put it is NOT an open standard. The usual way of Microsoft is to bind you to Windows as closely as possible. Make sure that very little of what you develop can be used on any other platform. You only have to look at "standards" like DirectX, COM/DCOM, ODBC, OLE, DDE, VBScript and so on to see that. Even real open standards, like the Berkely Sockets standards, have been warped by Microsoft's implementation - or as Microsoft prefers to call it "extensions to make the standard work better". Yeah right. Like what Microsoft did with Java. And when they can not create "extensions" for it to tie you to the Microsoft platform, they simply drop support for it. Like they did with OpenGL.

The day that Oracle provide native server support for something like DCOM is the day that I walk out of the IS industry as it will mean that Microsoft is ruling everything... ;-)

Billy Received on Wed Feb 16 2000 - 00:00:00 CST