Storing cgi data in stacks

[Richard MacLemale]

I use the darwin mc engine extensively on our servers on our network.  I've
probably got thirty or so scripts that help me run the network, process
forms, all kinds of stuff.

Hypothetically speaking, say you had an html web page that sent info to a
metacard cgi script, that in turn added data to a stack.  MetaCard stacks
can be read by more than one process at a time, but they can't be written to
that way, can they? What would happen if you had two cgi scripts both
writing to the same stack at the EXACT (within a thousandth of a second)
same time?  I'm thinking that while one script is writing to it, the other
script would not have write access, but I'm running OS X Server, so maybe
I'm wrong?  And what if they were both writing to the same field in a stack?

And, more importantly, what steps could be taken in a cgi script to make
this approach work, if any?  Like, if a stack was currently being written
to, would darwin mc know that?  Is there some message returned like "stack
is in use" or something that you could trap for?  And maybe make your own
timeout?

I'm starting to look at more online calendar stuff and I'm wondering if I
can get away with using metacard stacks instead of learning MySQL.  Stacks
are, well, so much more fun to work with.  I'll learn and use MySQL if I
have to, but it looks like a pain in the ass compared to just making a
stack.  The stuff I'm looking at is for small group use - not something
that's going to be hit a kabillion times from the web.

Thoughts?

-- 
:)
Richard MacLemale
Network Administrator
J. W. Mitchell High School