My problems have been massive

blame the person that wrote the original code. i could have rewritten the entire thing from scratch in the time i have spent trying to teach you what you have done wrong

There is nothing to call to be put in the iframe on the parent page onload event. The database queries have not been run at that point so no results.

I am not talking about a parent onload event, i am talking about a iframe onload event

Your comment "ok for starters add this above "function onMessage. There is no message event because I can't figure out how to send a message back to the form from perl. "

i went to your page, looked at the source, and there is a "function onMessage" in it

So I don't understand what you are trying to demonstrate. The calls through cgi to update the tables and return data sets work fine.

If the calls were working fine you wouldnt be here asking the question, the cgi works fine maybe but the call is not working fine as it replaces the parent html

As I started out, my fundamental problem is sending a wm to the form triggering a call to get the result message and show it in the iframe as demonstrated by clicking the test button.

As i pointed out the root of your fundamental problem is that you are calling the cgi call in the parent and not the iframe. That is what the changes i suggested address

I don't understand this statement: Aparently not, it just replaced the main page it seems.

There is a lot you dont understand it seems. You seem to be trying to use magic spells that are above your level of understanding and you dont pay attention enough to even learn how to use them correctly. This code

<input type="button" class="jalaLtSans" value="Member Table Data Updat
+e" style="background-color:#0D4A80; width : 250px; color:#fff" onClic
+k = "self.location='https://www.jala-mi.org/httpsdocs/cgi-bin/update_
+tables-development.cgi?action=updatetable_3'"/>
[download]

calls the cgi in the parent. what you want to do is call it in the iframe. I showed you a way to do that, but you do not want to consider it, so it seems trying to help you anymore is just another lost cause. good luck