Show "progress" of a process using pl/sql web toolkit?

Platform: Oracle 9iR2 on Sun Solaris 9 with Oracle HTTP Server and mod_plsql

We have made extensive use of the PL/SQL web toolkit (htp etc packages). Sometimes submitting a form may result in an update that takes some time. We would ideally like to be able to show the user some kind of progress indicator but I cannot work out if how this can be done - has anyone come up with any cunning solutions?

I am thinking of a "refresh" set say to 5 seconds and which could show the progress of the task... the problem of course is communicating that progress. Assume the user has pressed the submit button and we have commenced execution of the pl/sql procedure named in the <form> tag. This may know for example that it has 500 transactions to perform and it can obviously therefore determine how far it is through the process of those... but how can it communicate this progress to the user in real time?

Thanks for any suggestions.

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jeremy
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jeremy at hireserve dot com