Okay, I need your guys expertise in this scenario:

You have two pages. One page you can enter text and post it. The other page is a stream of everything that is currently being posted. The stream page should not refresh, new content should just appear.

Now say there are thousands of people posting per minute and the streaming page is literally rushing with posts like a raging river. (so that the page doesnt get too big, it truncates posts after 200). Its just a realtime stream of thousands of new posts per minute.

Here is my question: What is the best programming technology to use for the least amount of strain on the server for such a real time stream? Is there anything better than ajax for dynamically posting content?

Thanks so much for your help!

Ill be honest with you
It dont matter what language you use. Any script that is running in real time and processing thousands of lines of data is going to be resource hog.

I have to agree with Brent: whatever you use and however you use it, you're going to have some serious server issues. And a resource hog on the user's side. I'm not even sure if a server is capable of doing what you just described.

But to answer your question: AJAX is the most efficient method for this that I know of.

- Steve