Chris Hutchinson writes: > Avoids much work in httpd, and allows user to hang up web connection and > return later to continue viewing status.
We used to do this, but found it more complex (more protocols and server types) than simply letting Apache/mod_perl handle the job. I guess this depends on the frequency of long requests, but in our case the mix is handle nicely with a single common server using http as the only protocol. The idea is that all the work is handled by the middle tier. This includes processing incoming mail messages, long running jobs, and credit card processing. There's a lot of common code between all these tasks, so memory is shared efficiently. One trick for long running jobs started by an http request is to reply to the user as normal and do the long part in a PerlCleanupHandler. This avoids a fork of a large process, which keeps the memory usage relatively constant. This simplifies resource allocation. Just another way to do it. Rob
