Multiple Application Instances

FROM : Daniel Hazelbaker
DATE : Wed Apr 06 21:02:03 2005

Greetings,

   <suckup>I come to all who are smarter than I with another
question.</suckup>

I have an application that "serves" a database and coordinates with the
clients connected to it.  I would like to be able to have it "serve"
multiple databases without interfering with each other. (As a usage
example, say one database for each department).  This was not something
I ever figured on doing in the initial design so it is not a simple
thing to redesign the single server application to serve multiple
databases within a single instance. (A lot of global variables and
such).

   So my question is, is there an apple approved method of running
multiple instances of an application, each with its own configuration,
on the same machine?  I know I can "force" it to happen by launching
the executables directly with Terminal, but I doubt that is an
appropriate way to do what I want.  Or am I stuck with the choices of
running on different machines or rewriting to deal with multiple
databases in a single instance?

Thanks,
Daniel Hazelbaker