Email is a logical solution, probably sending a link to the results page. Net::SMTP, Mail::Mailer, Mail::Sendmail are all alternatives to sendmail if you want perl. qmail and exim are some of many options on the system side.

The connection to the Browser will be broken within minutes - and let's be realistic - even if you have a results refresh page no one is going to wait 10 hours!. merlyn has a column in his Web Techniques column on handling long running CGI using refresh but 10 hours will try the patience of any user!!!!! See Watching long processes through HTTP for this technique.

Once a connection is terminated that is it (without a forced refresh to some page). One option might be to redirect to an html page that you dynamically create for the results. Initially you just put a bookmark me link on it and a message to click the link and bookmark the page, results will arrive whenever. Simply overwrite the page with the results when they arrive and follow up with an email with the link saying your results are ready or similar. That way the user can check the bookmarked link periodically or click the email link to get to the results.

I am vaguely interested in what takes 10 hours to run. I can pull a million URLs in 10 hours, process 20+ million DB queries, merge a few hundred million records..... It is possible there may be better algorithms for whatever the processing task is. Might be worth a second question.

cheers

tachyon

In reply to Re: alternatives to emailing the data back to the user by tachyon
in thread alternatives to emailing the data back to the user by Anonymous Monk

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