I don't know anything about XBase.pm, but my question would be "why?". You are already writing to a file, so you need not run the job every time a request comes in. Anyway, here's some pointers:

• If the data changes a lot, but your html need not be absolutely up-to-date, you could try generating the html file every 10 minutes or so by running a cron-job.
• I noticed that you have a LOT of columns in your data, and you don't use all of them, maybe you could try retrieving only the columns (and rows) you need. You will probably need DBI and the DBD::XBase module (supplied with XBase.pm) - It might be faster, but then again it might not - i've never tried any of them.

-- 
Joost       downtime n. The period during which a system
            is error-free and immune from user input.
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