Calling external program from PL/SQL

Does anyone know whether it's possible to call an external program living outside of Oracle from PL/SQl eg. a from a stored procedure?
Specifically i want to call back into my java appserver (ejb server) when a trigger/stored proc. is executed.
The call does not have to be synchronous, some sort of queue will do - eg JMS??
Any help greatly appreciated.
null

Hi
Which version of oracle you are using.
If it 8i, you can use external procedures/libraries. REfer to ORacle PLSQL documentation.
If you are using Oracle 7+ you can use dbms pipes to post your command string and a cron job to read the pipe and execute the string.
An alternate ugly way is to write to a file and some process reading the file at a regular interval.
HTH
Arvind Balaraman

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All this has to be done using a lower level implementation library - like UTL_FILE for example that wraps internal C written modules that does file I/O. PL/SQL can call these to do I/O on its behalf. Ditto for wrappers like UTL_TCP and others.

There is no default wrapper for calling external processes from PL/SQL. It can however be done indirectly using the external procedure (EXTPROC) feature, or using Java to do it.

The latter is the easiest. You create a Java stored proc that can access the operating system and run external programs and commands. You punch a big hole in the Oracle Java security to allow this Java stored proc access to the operating system. Next you create a PL/SQL wrapper for this Java proc which then in turn can be called from PL/SQL.
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create or replace and compile Java Source named "OSCommand" as
-- java: OS COMMAND
-- descr: Executes an Operating System Command using the JAVA RTS
-- IN parameter: os command to execute (including fully qualified path names)
-- OUT parameter: returncode [\nstring]
-- where string a max of 32000 chars of the output of the command
-- (note that \n is used as separators in the string)
-- returncode=-1 Java RTS error occurred (e.g. command does not exist)
-- returncode=255 o/s command failed (e.g. invalid command params)
import java.io.*;
import java.lang.*;
public class OSCommand{
 public static String Run(String Command){
 Runtime rt = Runtime.getRuntime();
 int rc = -1;
 try{
 Process p = rt.exec( Command );
 int bufSize = 32000;
 int len = 0;
 byte buffer[] = new byte[bufSize];
 String s = null;
 BufferedInputStream bis = new BufferedInputStream( p.getInputStream(), bufSize );
 len = bis.read( buffer, 0, bufSize );
 rc = p.waitFor();
 if ( len != -1 ){
 s = new String( buffer, 0, len );
 return( s );
 return( rc+"" );
 catch (Exception e){
 e.printStackTrace();
 return( "-1\ncommand[" + Command + "]\n" + e.getMessage() );
show errors
create or replace function OSexec( cCommand IN string ) return varchar2 is
-- function: OS EXEC
-- descr: PL/SQL wrapper for the Java OSCOMMAND stored proc
language JAVA
name 'OSCommand.Run(java.lang.String) return java.lang.String';
show errors
-- Punching a hole into the Java VM sandbox. The following must be run as
-- sysdba. Substitute SCOTT with the applicable schema that owns the OSEXEC
-- and OSCOMMAND stored procs.
declare
 SCHEMA varchar2(30) := 'SCOTT';
begin
 dbms_java.grant_permission(
 SCHEMA,
 'SYS:java.io.FilePermission',
 '<<ALL FILES>>',
 'execute'
 dbms_java.grant_permission(
 SCHEMA,
 'SYS:java.lang.RuntimePermission',
 'writeFileDescriptor',
 dbms_java.grant_permission(
 SCHEMA,
 'SYS:java.lang.RuntimePermission',
 'readFileDescriptor',
commit;
end;
-- example: running the Unix/Linux date command to get the current date and time
SQL> select OSexec('/usr/bin/date') as STDOUT from dual;
STDOUT
Fri Sep 1 08:09:34 SAST 2006
1 row selected.
SQL>Edited by: Billy Verreynne on Sep 4, 2008 6:26 PM to make the code snippet readable with the new Jive forum s/w.

Calling java program from PL/SQL code

Dear,
How to develop and call a java program from PL/SQL code?
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Calling external programs from Java?

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LeWalrus wrote:
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>
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Calling external dll from oracle 8i pl/sql

Hi
I am facing in calling extrenal dll from pl/sql.
Steps followed by me are
1.
create library crc_lib as
'D:\ORACLE\ORA81\RDBMS\EXTPROC\EXTPROC\my.DLL';
2.
CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION check_file_crc (f1 char)
RETURN BOOLEAN AS
EXTERNAL LIBRARY CRC_LIB
NAME "Check_File_CRC"
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See if MOS note      468404.1 proves helpful here (though not meant for your version of Oracle).

How can I execute an external program from within a button's event handler?

I am using Tomcat ApacheTomcat 6.0.16 with Netbeans 6.1 (with the latest JDK/J2EE)
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Thanks
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                bis.read(b);
                tmp += new String(b);
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Hi Fonsi!
One way to execute an external program is to use the System Exec.vi. You find it in the functions pallet under Communication.
/Thomas

How can I run an external program from a PLSQL procedure?

Is there a package to run an external program from PLSQL? or is there another way to do that?
thanks.

here there is an example about how a PL/SQL procedure can
work with an external C program.
http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/A87860_01/doc/appdev.817/a76936/dbms_pi2.htm#1003384
Apart from that you have Java Stored Procedures option
to carry out your task.
Java Stored Procedures Developer's Guide Contents / Search / Index / PDF
http://download-east.oracle.com/docs/cd/B10501_01/java.920/a96659.pdf
Joel P�rez

How to call external programs?

I have seen people call external programs through LabVIEW and was curious what functions you could use to do this.
I'm pretty sure its using one of the ActiveX functions or maybe 'open application reference .vi'.
Can anyone tell me (or show me) a quick example of how to open an external program (ie excel, notepad, etc) programatically
Cory K
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Cory K wrote:
Where did they get this:
Kudos for going from "I don't know to start" to "Let's stump Ben" with only the second post to this thread.
I either copy it from an example or try to browse to it.
NOTE:
If you plan to work with MS ActiveX objects, I found it very helpful to do a custom install of Office and make sure the help files for VBA are loaded. These will at the least give you an idea of what the methods are and what parameters go with each.
Ben
Message Edited by Ben on 12-31-2008 11:09 AM
Message Edited by Ben on 12-31-2008 11:13 AM
Ben Rayner
I am currently active on.. MainStream Preppers
Rayner's Ridge is under construction
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Calling external program from PL/SQL

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