App server ?

[Kaare Rasmussen]

My project needs some kind of work offloading from the user interface side. Most of the time the user will just update data, but there are some tasks that can be very time consuming. This is a financial application, so these tasks include invoicing, document creation, and more. These tasks could benefit from being treated as batch jobs.
I'm thinking to implement kind of an application server for this. A server could receive some kind of user/password information and a description of which kind of job to perform together with any necessary data. It would perform the action and then go to sleep. If more requests are send simultaneously, they should all be applied. Best would be if there could be configuration choices for how many processes (if any) could run at the same time.
It is a web based application, so it lives in an Apache process. It also relies on mod_perl and Embperl. It would be preferably if the server could be run within the same process, as a stand alone service on the same server or on one or more external servers.
Also, as this is a financial application, security is very important. I touched the topic of logging in, but what about encrypting the client / server trafic?
I do have some other more vague thoughts about timed events. Having this application server run tasks based on a schedule.
Can POE be used for this? I've looked at the "Application Servers" entry in the POE Coolbook, and it seems simple. But is it that simple, and will it work in the above mentioned environment? I don't want POE to control my whole application, as most of the time it will deal with user input and web pages. So the client code could be embedded in a web page.
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