I'm posed with a problem, looking for suggestions for possible resolution. I have a script that has many steps in it, including telnet & ftp sessions, database unloads, and other routines. This script will run on a server, accessing a remote server. This works fine. I will likely have several dozen (maybe as many as 100) iterations of this script running simultaneously. The problem is, that their is a "bottleneck" towards the end of my script -- I have to call a 3rd party process that is single-threaded. This means that if I have ~100 versions of my script running, I can only have one at a time execute the 3rd party software. It is very likely that multiple versions will arrive at this bottle-neck junction at the same time. If I had more than one call the third party program, one will run, one will loose, and die.
So I am looking for suggestions on how I might attack this problem. I've thought about building some sort of external queue (like a simple hash file). The servers have numbers like server_01, server_02, etc. When a iteration of the script completes, it writes out it's server name to the file, pauses, then checks of any other iteration is running the third party software. If one is running, it waits, with it's server name at the top of the file queue, waiting. A problem might be if again, two or more versions want to update this queue file, so I thought maybe a random-wait period before writing to the file-queue. I'm open to other ideas. (please don't suggest we rename or copy the third party software, it just isn't possible). I'm not looking for code, per se, but ideas I can implement that will guarantee I will always only have one copy of the external third party software running (including pre-checks, queues, etc. Thanks, Jeff __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Tax Center - File online, calculators, forms, and more http://tax.yahoo.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]