Using SS2000. We have several packages that run every 30 minutes to an hour
and they read and update the same table. I'm wondering if there is a way,
before a package runs, to check to see if one of the other packages is
running and then not run the second package until the first one finishes. I
thought maybe by checking the system processes I could tell but the packages
all appear to run as dtsrun.

I also thought I could run each package using dtsrun and wrap a vb exe file
around it and then look for the vb exe file in system processes. Or maybe
there are some dts objects that I can check in a vb program to see if the
package is running using the package id?

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,

Dan

There isn't really any way to see which package is running, as they are
generally hosted inside something like DTSRUN as you have seen, and they
aren't really SQL processes in their own right.

Some ideas-

Make the packages run sequentially, perhaps have each package as a different
step within a SQL Server Agent job.

Or

If each package is a job then you could check the running jobs, and look for
the appropriate named job.

Or

On the advanced properties of a Connection in DTS you can set the property
called Application Name. This will show up in sysprocesses as whatever value
you enter, so you can use a value specific to the package, such as package
name, and other packages can query sysprocesses to see if that value is
present.


--
Darren Green
http://www.sqldts.com



"Dan" <ddonahue (AT) archermalmo (DOT) com> wrote

I'll look into your second and third suggestions some more.

Thanks Darren,

Dan

"Darren Green" <darren.green (AT) reply-to-newsgroup-sqldts (DOT) com> wrote