Killing database engines within an application

We have a very noisy problem when using ESQL/C version 4 and doing one of the following actions: * forking a process after having used some SQL statement and then exiting with the father and using more SQL statement in the child. * using a system() call in the background to execute some ACE report (i.e. with "&" al the and of che command line ) * exec()uting a new process while the caller process is a ESQL/C program In the first issue, the father won't die, in the second we have to wait for the completion of the command in order to exit and in the third we create a secon back-end process while the first remains in memory, probably inactive. We have fixed it using the global variable "bkend_pid" and kill()ing the process whose PID is the value of that variable. But the question is: is this legal ? Is there somewhere some better method ? Any hint will be apreciated -- Pietro Komanns peter@cucciolo.sublink.ORG SINDATA R&D Via Rovereto, 17 phone +39-(0)39-60.83.733 20059 Vimercate MI ITALY fax +39-(0)39-60.83.957