So I'm waiting for Userland "Frontier" to recieve a database update, through it's nifty "XML-RPC"-based update feature. Problem is, it's been months since I updated this copy of Frontier, and the update is 10500K. Yikes! Frontier's status message tells me that it's receiving the data, but doesn't tell me how far it's along in the process.

Now, Userland has been working on a nifty extension to Frontier's outliner called Radio Userland. Radio Userland does some cool tricks with outlines, and since this functionality is ostensibly being moved back up the chain into Frontier, there presents itself a possible solution:

Once that outlining magic is in Frontier, when I request updates, first send me an outline of all the new parts I'm going to get. Let me select which parts to get, then remove them from the outline as they're imported. When the outline is empty, I'm up-to-date.