RE: CGIDEV2 and non-buffered output

I had a chance to check *FINI today, and had no problems. For the amount of
data I'm testing with, there wasn't a significant difference. But I want
this for a different reason.

The CGI program I'm testing has a long SQL preparation time and returns a
few hundred rows. Instead of the "I submitted the page but nothing is
happening" response, I wanted to show a piece of the new page as soon as
possible, to let the user know they did submit the page.

I did a wrtsection('top')/wrtsection('*fini') then went into the SQL loop. I
did a wrtsection('*fini') after each detail write. I expected to see the
<h1>page title</h1> immediately after calling the program, then a pause when
SQL is prepared, then detail rows written one at a time. However, I didn't
see the <h1> until I started fetching SQL results.

I expected:
[submit page]
<h1>page title</h1>
[wait]
<table row>
<table row>
...

I got
[submit page]
[wait]
<h1>page title</h1>
<table row>
...

Is there a minimum amount of data that must be sent to the browser before it
is shown? I wouldn't think so, but one never knows. (Using IE5.5, our
corporate standard).

I will look into this more. Thanks for confirming that I wouldn't "hurt"
anything by doing this.

Thanks,
Loyd

-----Original Message-----
From: Mel Rothman [mailto:mel@rothmanweb.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 10:47 PM
To: web400@midrange.com
Subject: Re: [WEB400] CGIDEV2 and non-buffered output


CGIDEV2 buffers the output in order to minimize the number of calls to
QtmhWrStout.  This was done at the suggestion of the V3R2 and V3R7 HTTP
server developers.

I just tested multiple uses of WrtSection('*fini') and things work just
fine.  So, if you don't want to buffer the output, use *fini as often as you
like.  You might want to test single *fini versus multiple *fini and let the
mailing list know if there are any perceivable differences.

Mel Rothman, CGIDEV2 Author
IBM eServer Custom Technology Center (eCTC), Rochester, Minnesota
http://www-1.ibm.com/servers/eserver/iseries/service/ctc/
http://www.easy400.ibm.it/en