Forking and BG processes in PHP

Hi everybody, I wasn't able to find a good answer in the archives, so I thought I would ask here. This is the scenario: An user can request a time-expensive DB processing via a PHP page. I'd like to arrange for having a confirmation page telling the user that the request is being processed, and then redirecting him/doing whatever else/etc. Meanwhile, there should be a process actually doing the DB work. When it's finished, it should send a mail to the requester including an URL for the download of the results of the operation. Problem is, is there a way to make PHP start a background process which is independent from the spawning page time-line? the closest I've seen to this is the use of register/unregister_tick_function but it isn't clear from documentation as to whether the main flow of execution is suspended at the time of execution of the tick_function (i.e. working like a GOTO/GOSUB) or it's actually spawning a new process with a different timeline (thus allowing the main page to finish without killing the tick_function as well) Or... do I need to forget about it and call bash scripts? thanks for your answers, Max -- Best regards, Massimiliano Bariola mailto:bariola@motorcity.it Motorcity S.p.a. +39 30 2927411 Corso Magenta 27 25100 Brescia - ITALY