you can use response.write function.

eg : response.write("100")

@ARA - I'm sorry, but my ASP skills are very thin so I can help you with server side only on conceptual level. If you want to create progress bar for database activity, my advice is to split database insert to several steps (simply create loop) . First make one insert with value 0 to the temporary table. When database insert starts, after every 200 inserted rows, update value in temporary table by 1. So, in case of 20,000 rows you will actually get job percentage completion. Now is easy to implement simple service to read updated value from database and return it as XML to the JavaScript progress bar. Hope this tip will give you an idea of how to create progress bar for adding record to the database.

Hope this tips will help you to find and solve the problem.
Cheers!

If you can somehow read the progress of job execution with separate CGI, that should be the solution for your problem.

I will give you another scenario for monitoring 10000 inserts to the MySQL database. First I have to be sure that execution time will not be longer then PHP limit (or I will have to increase max_execution_time parameter in /etc/php.ini file). Next, after every 100 inserts in table "A", I will update counter in the same MySQL database (for example "counter" row in my "progress" table). AJAX progress bar will be directed to read the "counter" row from "progress" table and display it to the user interface. With this solution, I will be able to monitor MySQL insert progress ...

Hope this comment will give you some hints and directions.
Cheers!

What am I doing wrong?
My CGI is just returning STDOUT text.
my request_handler looks like this:

function request_handler() {
    var r = "";
    if (request.readyState === 4) {   // if state = 4 (operation is completed)
        if (request.status === 200) { // and the HTTP status is OK
            r = request.responseText;
            delayWrite(r);
        } else { // if request status isn't OK
            r = request.responseText;
            delayWrite(r);
        }
    }
}