Running asynchronous, independent database users from PL/SQL

I would like to start a process from a running pl/sql process....... I figure there's GOT to be some package, or utility, or something in Oracle to do this, but I can't find it... Or I'm not understanding it when I see it...

For example:

I have package XYZ with procedure A in it as a stored procedure in the database I also have package MMM with procedure B in it as a stored procedure.

I run XYZ.A from the command line, and it happily takes off and starts processing...

At some point during the processing I want to start an independend MMM.B to perform some task. I want to PASS parameters to MMM.B from XYZ.A, but NOT have XYZ.A wait for MMM.B to complete. I want it to start MMM.B then continue on about its processing. While the first copy of MMM.B is running, I may want to start ANOTHER ONE, pass it different values for the parameters and have MMM.B (2) go off doing its thing... So, at this moment I have XYZ.A, MMM.B, and MMM.B(2) all running concurrently.

I don't think HOST will work here because I want to have MMM.B get parameters from XYZ.A...

So, for instance I could have XYZ.A sitting in a loop grabbing parent records from a table. For each record I want to start some long-running process MMM.B that would go off and independently process something...

So, package? utility? dbms_ something? Received on Sat Jul 21 2001 - 16:31:31 CDT