Locks which survive COMMIT

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to perform a COMMIT without releasing a lock?

I'm currently writing a program using PRO*C which updates the database.

For speed, I want to only read from the database once. So I load some of the reference tables into memory when the program starts up, and put a share lock on the entire table to ensure consistant data.

But when I've finished processing a 'chunk' (a person in fact), I want to write the necessary changes back to the database, and COMMIT them so that other processes can see these changes. Unfortunately, this releases the lock on my reference table.

-- 
 _________________________   __________________________________________
/  Tommy Wareing          \ /  I've been looking for an original sin,  \
|  p0070621_at_brookes.ac.uk  X   One with a twist and a bit of a spin    |
\  0865-483389            / \     -- Pandora's Box, Jim Steinman       /
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~   ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~