cache method calls as valid methods if seen previously to avoid can()
overhead?

test suite

serious benchmarking...

I tried to do some quick benchmarking using a real handler - I used a
method handler so it runs under Apache::Dispatch and normal mod_perl 
without modification.

the handler did the following:
  run an Oracle stored procedure (using Apache::DBI with connect_on_init)
  fill in a simple template using Text::Template
  output results

I think the results look pretty promising in a real world scenario

----------------------------------------------------------------------
using a single <Location> directive with a method handler

[gyoung@account-test bin]$ ./ab -n10000 -c10 \
-C'MYA::Authenticate_=quality:12568' \
http://account-test.laserlink.net/test

This is ApacheBench, Version 1.3c <$Revision: 1.38 $> apache-1.3
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998-1999 The Apache Group, http://www.apache.org/

Server Software:        Apache/1.3.12                                      
Server Hostname:        account-test.laserlink.net
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /test
Document Length:        8703 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   697.210 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      88548854 bytes
HTML transferred:       87038703 bytes
Requests per second:    14.34
Transfer rate:          127.00 kb/s received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min   avg   max
Connect:        0     1   372
Processing:    99   695  2110
Total:         99   696  2482
 
----------------------------------------------------------------------
using Apache::Dispatch with DispatchISA On

[gyoung@account-test bin]$ ./ab -n10000 -c10 \
-C'MYA::Authenticate_=quality:12568' \
http://account-test.laserlink.net/scripts/Plan/show

This is ApacheBench, Version 1.3c <$Revision: 1.38 $> apache-1.3
Copyright (c) 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Copyright (c) 1998-1999 The Apache Group, http://www.apache.org/

Server Software:        Apache/1.3.12                                      
Server Hostname:        account-test.laserlink.net
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /scripts/Plan/show
Document Length:        8703 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   725.533 seconds
Complete requests:      10000
Failed requests:        0
Total transferred:      88540000 bytes
HTML transferred:       87030000 bytes
Requests per second:    13.78
Transfer rate:          122.03 kb/s received

Connnection Times (ms)
              min   avg   max
Connect:        0     0   263
Processing:    91   724  2072
Total:         91   724  2335
