in reply to Is forking the best solution for a CGI running a heavy/slow process?

In general, I'd say that: yes, that's a good way of doing things. Another option (maybe not even as good, but it may depend on the situation) is to keep the connection to the browser open by spooling html as you go. You have to use non-parsed headers (CGI->nph(1)), and set $|=1.

Anyway, all things considered, the way you're describing is usually better, but the streaming content usually easier (since you don't have to separate your processing into something that can be forked off, and that reports it's status to another script... and then write that other script to display the status and refresh, etc... it's just more work). 

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