A file can be a nice and simple way of interfacing with a background process. You can just have a deamon process update a file periodically and then you can have access to that info whenever you want. You could even use something like Data::Dumper or YAML to exchange complex data structures.

However, if you have multiple tasks to run and you're already using a database, I would use the database to do the communication. i.e. set up one table where each record is a task (id, status etc) and run one or more deamon processes that poll that table looking for new tasks and update the records as they progress. Or run a single deamon that forks() off new children for each task. Or run all tasks sequentially, it'll all look the same from the CGI process's point of view.

"What should it profit a man, if he should win a flame war, yet lose his cool?"

In reply to Re: Managing a long running server side process using CGI by Joost
in thread Managing a long running server side process using CGI by GrandFather

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