Re: Timer support in oracle 9i

Mukund wrote:

> Dear oracle experts,
>
> I'd like to know if oracle database supports event notifications
> when a user defined timer expires. To be more specific, I'd like to
> have a table that has among other fields, a column for storing an
> expiry time. When the expiry time is up, I'd like oracle to send a
> notification to a java application that the expiry time for the record
> is up. Is it possible to do something like this?
>
> Thanks,
> Mukund

Creating your own table is possible but might well be seen as reinventing the wheel. In 9i you can use DBMS_JOB and look at the data dictionary views DBA_JOBS, ALL_JOBS, and USER_JOBS for information on such things. In 10g you could use either DBMS_JOBS or DBMS_SCHEDULER. Notification can be done in 9i through pipes, alerts, queues, or UTL_SMTP. In 10g you can add the UTL_MAIL built-in package to the available tools.

Demos of many of these are available at http://www.psoug.org click on Morgan's Library.

-- 
Daniel A. Morgan
University of Washington
damorgan_at_x.washington.edu
(replace 'x' with 'u' to respond)