> Would be lovely to know more. So, this customer doesn't want
> an acknowledgement, but insists on one?

Yup. The CGI is part of a system that provides Flood Certificates to Loan companies and Banks. If the Boolean "WaitForCertificate" is set "T" then the customer is indicating he wants a finished certificate sent on the open channel. There is also a provision for the XML copy of the certifcation to be set back to a ResponseURL. The PDF only can be sent via Email or FAX. A customer can even indicate don't send him anything. Presumably he'll send a query when he's ready for it.

> An acknowledgement of.. what?

An XML document which is either a compelte certificate or tells him where the order went and trackng information.

> I speculate that there're two possible acknowledgments here:
> 1) "I received your XML";
> 2) "I successfully process-etc-ed it".

Essentially yes tho number 2 can be a pretty wide range of responses.

> If that is so, de-coupling the code into to parts:
> 1) getting the client data;l
> 2) processing it asynchronously

I doubt seriously if other customers would tolerate this. Most want an answer back three seconds before they send it but are willing to tolerate a plus five to plus ten second delay. It may become necesary to just change the settings for this one customer from wahtehe says he wants to what his behavior indicates he really wants. I hate that kind of second guessing tho.