Patent ID: 7506204

Claim:
A method for connecting to a database server, comprising: creating a diagnostic session via a connection to the database server, said connection being dedicated to diagnostic functions including logging on to said connection only by users having administrator privileges on the database server, whereby a special thread is assigned to said connection allowing for execution of diagnostic functions or queries on a separate scheduler; initiating over said connection at least one diagnostic function on the database server and receiving the results of the at least one diagnostic function indicating at least one problem with operation of the database server; and correcting the at least one problem by issuing at least one corrective command to the database server over said connection without restarting the database server, wherein said initiating at least one diagnostic function includes initiating a query of a batch table of the database server and said results indicate information about system process identifiers executing on the database server, and wherein said correcting includes terminating at least one process corresponding to an ill behaving system process identifier.