Since I started work on Apache::UploadMeter, I've started to look into the possibilities of creating smarter and more user-interactive webapps using IPC between webserver processes. Basically, the way this works is that you can open a "magic" URL at form submission/link-click time, which can be tied to a "slave" server, which can be instructed to provide any type of realtime feedback that you'd like - in the case of Apache::UploadMeter, the "magic" URL displays a snapshot of the upload process and reloads itself every X seconds, but form submissions can be done with this too. The problem is that under Apache 1.3, that wouldn't work well due to the fact that each child process is just that: a standalone process. And that's going to tie up a lot of servers and child processes, and basically make a big mess. However, under the Apache 2 threading MPM, this wouldn't seem to be a problem - especially if there is good shared resources between the threads. And mod_perl shouldn't be a problem either, as long as shared perl interpreters are used... So basically, I'd like to know if other people have any ideas that they'd be interested in sharing, and just basically see if we could look at some of the new ways of designing webapps like this. Looking forward to getting feedback, Issac
PS. I posted to this list because I'd like to hear from mod_perl users - not just developers or advocates - but if this gets way OT, let's move this thread to the appropriate place.