OCI/Pro*C Method for ALTER SYSTEM

All,
I'm posed with a problem. I have a particular middleware product that likes to leave dead processes around with connections to ORACLE. I've written a Pro*C program that checks the IP address and sends a ping (ICMP ECHOREQUEST) to the machines and if they are indeed turned off (PCs), then it kills the associated process on the server. What I'd like to do, and I've attempted this with Pro*C to no avail, is to have this program issue an ALTER SYSTEM KILL SESSION 'sid, serial#' first, and then kill the process. Pro*C doesn't allow me to do this (as ALTER SYSTEM isn't supported in Embedded SQL). My options is to attempt this in OCI (the ALTER SYSTEM method).

Here's my 2 questions...
a. Can this be done with a kill signal to the oracle process...

   I don't want to send a KILL -9 to the process. b. OR can this be done using OCI and just calling ORACLE directly

   and issuing the ALTER SYSTEM method which I'd like to use.

Thanks for any replies

Darrin
darrin_at_ids.net
darrin_at_mit.edu

-- 
Darrin Robinson                      HAMnet  146.700+  N1LLV
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