Ok will sending back a multipart document (thru a server push) does work but the only way (I know of) to do that while still allowing something else to do something is alarm because the Perl 5.6.1 that I have does not have threads. I can not use alarm because some of the SOAP cgis I call use SOAP... Spawning a process from the mod_perl SOAP handler is not a good idea because not only does it slow me down but killing it off effectively is troublesome. And if the process is not killed off it becomes a hang-up situation for Apache.

**sigh**

I am really not quite sure of what to do.

Thank you for the comment and link, perrin. But unfortunately launching the process and then periodically checking back is not really an option for me because I never know how long the user code might run. And enforcing a standard time for every function call is a Bad Thing(tm).

The server push with a multipart document is what I need and it does work. I just have to make it work without alarm.

--habit