1. A method for servicing requests received by a database system in a multiple-user environment, the method comprising the steps of: spawning a first process executing a first virtual machine instance in response to establishing a first database session between the database system and a first user; spawning a second process executing a second virtual machine instance in response to establishing a second database session between the database system and a second user; responding to requests that are received by the database system in said first session by executing virtual machine code using the first virtual machine instance; and responding to requests that are received by the database system in said second session by executing the virtual machine code using a the second virtual machine instance; wherein said first virtual machine instance and said second virtual machine instance share access to data stored in a shared state area allocated in volatile memory associated with said server the database system.