run PHP with user's permissions

Hi there,

I want to run PHP on my Apache 2.2 machine with the permission of the
VSite or user invoking the script.

Right now, I do it via the kernel binfmt support and suEXEC, so my
scripts run as CGI. This leads to some problems, like memory and CPU
consumption for the PHP binary instead of a module, and problems when
several users should edit a PHP file - suEXEC only allows write
permission for the owner.

Is there any other way of achieving this, maybe more elegant?

Thanks!
Florian