How to call an external program

Hi gurus
i have a simple question. Can i call an external program from an PL/SQL procedure.
If yes. How can i make this. Can you give me a small example and which packages must be installed.

our system runs under linux with the oracle enterprice edition 8.1.7.

Thanks

Regards
Thomas Schmidt

[Edited by tomate on 04-06-2001 at 02:13 AM]

Hi

First of all u havent mentioned the version u r using..anyway check this



CREATE OR REPLACE AND RESOLVE JAVA SOURCE NAMED "Exec" AS
import java.lang.Runtime;

public class Exec {
public static void ExecNT (String command) throws java.io.IOException {
Runtime rt = java.lang.Runtime.getRuntime();
String[] cmd = {"cmd", "/c", command};
rt.exec(cmd);
}
}
/
CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE OS AS
PROCEDURE ExecNT (command IN VARCHAR2);
END;
/
CREATE OR REPLACE PACKAGE BODY OS AS
PROCEDURE ExecNT (command IN VARCHAR2)
AS LANGUAGE JAVA NAME 'Exec.ExecNT(java.lang.String)';
END;


Example
======

BEGIN
OS.ExecNT('copy c:\temp\t1.txt c:\temp\t2.txt');
END;


Requirements and limitations:
===================
1. The package runs on Windows NT only. It might run on Windows 95/98/2000, but is not tested on these platforms.
2. The Oracle server should be Oracle8i 8.1.5 or higher with JServer option installed.
3. The user in which schema the package is installed should have the JAVAUSERPRIV and JAVASYSPRIV roles granted.