Advice on long running processes

[commander_coder at hotmail.com]

Hello,

I write a lot of CGI scripts, in Python of course.  Now I need to
convert some to long-running processes.  I'm having trouble finding
resources about the best practices to do that.

I've found a lot of email discussions that say something like, "You
need to educate yourself about the differences when you have long-
running processes" but I've not had a lot of luck with finding things
that explain the differences.  I've seen some talk about database
timeouts, for instance, but I'm not sure I understand the problems.
Can anyone here suggest some resources?  I'd be happy with web sites,
with buying a book, anything.

I ask here because I write in Python and so if those resources used
Python then that would be super.

Thanks,
Jim