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Minimizing response times

CGI scripts are normally invoked in response to a request from a user. Although the user may be accustomed to delays caused by the network it is generally not a good idea to perform lengthy processing. It is often better for the program to spawn another process to perform the actual processing, and for the original program to output a document saying that processing has been initiated. It may be useful to include a link in this document with enough state information embedded to allow a second script to determine and return information about the status of the spawned program.

Spinning the Web by Andrew Ford
© 1995 International Thomson Publishing
© 2002 Andrew Ford and Ford & Mason Ltd
Note: this HTML document was generated in December 1994 directly from the LaTeX source files using LaTeX2HTML. It was formatted into our standard page layout using the Template Toolkit. The document is mainly of historical interest as obviously many of the sites mentioned have long since disappeared.