This is my first time ever writing a unix shell script, so I have no idea. Here is what we have going on. We have a view in oracle that I am selecting the count from. I want to pass the count into a variable and pass it into the unix shell script. If the count is not 0 then I want the shell script to sleep for 10 minutes and then query the view again. If somebody could please provide me with some code or any kind of help I would appreciate it. Thanks!!!!

Even if you ultimately need to execute a plsql block after determining that the view has rows, your 10-minute monitoring of the view could use sqlplus instead of plsql. Will that approach be OK?

Yeah that is my mistake. I meant to say sqlplus. You are correct. I just want to create a unix shell script the queries a view and if the view has rows then wait 10 minutes before I query it again. Thanks

The script below will check the view every 600 seconds, and when there is a row count, it will <do whatever> such as run a plsql script, then break out of the while-loop and terminate. #!/bin/sh count=0 while true do echo "\ set pagesize 0 select count(*) from my_view;" | sqlplus -s scott/tiger | read count if [ $count -gt 0 ] ; then    echo "Count detected: $count" #  <do whatever>    break # (out of the while-loop) else    sleep 600 fi done exit 0 Alternatively, if you want to keep monitoring every 10 minutes, then replace the above if-else with this: if [ $count -gt 0 ] ; then    echo "Count detected: $count" #  <do whatever> fi sleep 600

Here is the code I have #!/bin/sh count=0 while true do echo "\ set pagesize 0 select count(*) from bus_adm.dw_unfinished_reports;" | sqlplus -s scott/tiger | read count if [$count -gt 0]; then echo "count is zero" else echo "count is not zero" fi done exit 0 The error I'm getting is unfinished_reports.ksh[9]: [ERROR:: not found. Also in the loop, what is the condition that is being evaluated. While what is true? Thanks

Also, if I have it echo "$count" It echos ERROR. Appears that something is not working correctly with the variable.

In the statement: if [$count -gt 0]; then you need a space after the left bracket and a space before the right bracket. Also, the while-loop does not have a sleep in it, so if it were working, it would be repeatedly running sqlplus over and over with no pause. "while true" starts a while loop (delimited with do/done) that would run forever unless you break out of it because the expression "true" always evaluates as true. As opposed to some other condition which might evaluate as either true or false such as: while [ $count -eq 0 ]