Operator to client communications

   How do I communicate from my Oracle server to remote clients? I have started building some client server applications in Gupta's SQLWindows and am looking at Object View. In the past, sys admins could communicate to users of TTY terminal apps that the server is going to be shutdown for what ever reason. New client server systems now are faced with the fact that users may not even show up on a UNIX "who" much less be able to communicate to them.

   Is anyone out there that is creating client server apps attacked this problem? Obviously I am using Oracle and Windows front-ends so do you have something applicable?

   I am thinking about an approach that would start a background monitor to the database that I am connecting to. It could monitor a particular table that has three column's (sender, receiver, message). The application would look for messages being sent to it's user-name or "all". If found, it would activate and pop up a dialog on the users screen. This would solve the problem of the operator not being able to notify all users.

   This approach is pretty brute force. I would prefer that only one monitor be running for each database server (oracle SID). That is, if I start multiple apps that use the same SID, only one monitor would be present till the last one closed.

   Not being a big time windows programmer, I chose this way to implement messaging, how would I check the Windows process list for existence of my monitor prog?

   Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

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chris.claborne_at_sandiegoca.ncr.com  ...(*)/(*).                 CI$: 76340.2422