fine tuning - making my perl script run faster

what to do and where to look to make the perl script through CGI faster

[jeremy goodrich]

I've been working on an application for work, it's almost done, but the lag time with just myself using it is incredible.

I can't imagine what it would be like if even 10 people were using it - probably make it so slow as to be next to useless.

Speed is very critical - how do I make it faster? I've never done that before, and it's plain PERL, not mod_perl (not sure that's an option...). So how do I start with some basic / intermediate / advanced performance tuning of this beast? Thanks.

[volatilegx]

What does the script do? If you want to stickymail me a URL to where I can see the source, maybe I can help.

[jeremy goodrich]

processes some input from a mysql db, does stuff, outputs through a file which is opened from a file handle, and not from mysql.

Would make it faster loading the template from MySQL as well?

Or would the best way to make it generate the page in line? hmmm...

[Josk]

Would it not be best to everything inline? I would guess that making a page, and then opening to display would take time. However...you could cache that page for next time, and not have to do the same lookup twice.

At the moment I'm the above, storing the data in a javascript arry (prompted by a person in this very forum) and then muckin' around with it then...