How to suspend a script?

[Steve]

Steve wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> How can I send a python script a suspend signal? I need to suspend a 
> script that frequently updates the database so that I can do a "vacuum" 
> on  the database without affecting the script. Thanks!
> 
> Steve
> 


I would like to add that I want it to be a cron job so I need to do 
something externally. This might be a trivial thing to do but I'm a 
newbie and I'm not too fluent with linux.

Steve