What's a good strategy to restart downed FastCGI processes automatically?

I've got a Perl based FastCGI app that rarely goes down. However, when it does go down, the restart is not automatic. Restarting Apache manually always does the trick but that does address improving the uptime of the app. I'm thinking of using a `cron` job in conjunction with a script that uses `WWW::Mechanize` to periodically check on the app and restart it as required, as suggested by the folks at Perl Monks : Keep FastCGI Processes Up and Running Before I do that, I'm want to know if anyone knows of better ways to monitor a FastCGI process and restarting it automatically when it dies, or is the method suggested above the optimal one? Thanks.