Following up on what huck suggested, here is a demo to play with using Ajax. Change the file paths and urls to suit your web server.
An html page

<html>
<head><title>Example</title>

  <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.1.1/jque
+ry.min.js">
  </script>
  <script>

    $(document).ready(function() {
      $(".update").click(function(){
        var button = this;
        $.ajax({
          type: 'POST',
          url: 'runme.cgi',
          data: { 'action': $(button).attr("id") },
          success: function(res) {
            alert( res.msg  );
            var myIFrame = document.getElementById("dataDialog");
            myIFrame.src = "runme.cgi?action=result";
          },
          error: function() {
            alert("Error : did not work");
          }
        });
      })
    })

    </script>
</head>
<body>
<iframe id="dataDialog" src="about:blank"></iframe>
<h2>Using Ajax</h2>
<button class="update" id="update_1">Update 1</button>
<button class="update" id="update_2">Update 2</button>
<button class="update" id="update_3">Update 3</button>
<button class="update" id="update_4">Update 4</button>
</body>
</html>

[download]

and the script runme.cgi

#!/usr/bin/perl
use CGI;
use JSON; 
use strict;

my $logtext;
my $logfile = 'c:/temp/web/update.log'; # somewhere writeable
my $q = new CGI;
my $action = $q->param('action');

if ($action =~ /update/){
  # do stuff to update database
  sleep 1;
  open OUT,'>', $logfile or die "$!";
  print OUT "Result of $action on\n".scalar(localtime)."\n";
  print OUT "Line $_ message\n" for (1..rand(10));
  close OUT;
  
  my $json = encode_json( { msg => "$action done" } );
  
  # response
  print $q->header( -type => 'application/json' ),$json;
  exit;
} 

if ($action eq "result"){
  # get results of last update
  if (-e $logfile){
    open IN,'<', $logfile or die "$!";
    $logtext = do {local $/;<IN>};
    close IN;
  }

  print $q->header( {-pragma =>'no-cache',
           -cache_control => "no-store,no-cache,must-revalidate"} ),
  $q->start_html,
  $q->pre($logtext),$q->end_html;
  exit;
}

[download]
poj

In reply to Re^5: send windowmessage from cgi back to form that called the cgi by poj
in thread send windowmessage from cgi back to form that called the cgi by tultalk

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