shell out from client side to host side

Sql FORMS has a HOST command all right BUT if FORMS is running on the client side, thats where the shell script will run. You can work around that by creating a little "demon" on the host side which does nothing much but hang a read from a PIPE. Have the client side send messages over the pipe which are in effect calls or requests to call a "host" side script. The demon can be written in anything that can get to pl/sql (to read the pipe).

I did one of those in SQR, works fine. But you can use C (make that pro*C) or OCI, or even sql*plus running on the host.

I think there's a guy in Australia who used to advertize on the Oracle CIS user group who has some more elaborate system commercially available.

See the Applications Developoer's guide for how to set up the demon and Pipes.

There's also another sneaky thing you can do, assuming you have a web server available. Theres a package available HTTP or somehing like that with a procedure http_request. It allows you to request an HTML page from inside pl/sql. Request a page which is actually a cgi script that runs your unix shell script.

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