Message during a request to a DB in PHP

I have a time consuming request to my DB. Meanwhile I would like to show a message to the user (to say the request is in process) and when the request to the DB ends take the user to an other page or show the results…. How can I do that in PHP and MySQL?

Thanks….

Easy thing to do is set a flag "AFTER" the db query is done.
You can use a session variable or write a file to the filesystem as a flag.

A session variable would be better because you can use some unique ID for the user's session to mark the variable.

If I had time I'd whip up an example, but I don't.

You can show some nice animated graphic and refresh the page say every 5 seconds... upon refresh of the page you could check for the flag... if not there, just continue to show the page.

If it is there continue or forward the user to another page.


Here is a good example:
http://www.laidbak.net/pleasewait/?s=1