CGI is specifically a user orientated program, it runs only when the user requests a specific page. I am not sure what you are trying to do. My guess is one of two things:
- You are trying to suck data from the web to a local database for offline viewing (Quote: Retrieve the stock quotes from a web page and form a database) If you want to do this you have a few alternatives, take a look at HTTP client in perl a recient discussion that describes how to do this. You could also have a look at wget, a stand alone application. You will find wget at freshmeat
- You are trying to provide a web page that refreshes itself to show the latest information take a look at netscapes page on dynamic documentation here specifically it talks about server push and client pull methods for dynamic web content. The example it gives quote:
The general idea is that browsers have always been driven by user input. You click on a link or an icon or an image and some data comes to you. As soon as people saw they could do that, they wanted to give a server the ability to push new data down to the browser. (An obvious example is a stock trader who wants to see new quote data every 5 minutes.) Up until now, that hasn't been possible.
I hope this helps, if it does not then post some more details and I will see if I can help further.
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Zigster