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Search FORMs and scrolling search results by Keith Oustalet

Anyone who has been on the Internet for a while will probably be familiar with Web sites such as Alta Vista and Yahoo. These sites, popularly referred to as "Search Engines", help you find data on almost any subject, no matter where it's located on the Web. Search Engines have proved their value time and again, but Web Authors often fail to realize just how important the underlying technology can be to databases on their own local Web Sites. Even if the only database information on your Site comes from a Guestbook, a point may eventually be reached where it contains a very large number of records. In this case, some method of searching, extracting, and displaying data will have to be created in order to keep things running efficiently.

This method could be simple or complex, depending on the number of data fields in a particular database and how they relate to one another. But even simple data structures tend to change over time, becoming more complex as new fields are added and new relations among those fields are created. In short, the problem most people run into if they are not careful is that the "Search Engine" they design today fails to keep up with the changes in the underlying data structure. This often requires that a substantial amount of time be spent updating and maintaining the code that controls the search engine, both in the way it appears on-screen to the User, and to the way it operates. Unless the method devised is flexible enough to anticipate a large number of options and conditions, you may one day discover to your horror that you have landed in "maintenance hell" so to speak, and that you are spending far too much of your valuable time maintaining old applications instead of creating new ones.

The question then is, "How can I design a Search Engine for a database that will require as little maintenance as possible, and be useful to a large number of potential Users, each of whom has his own idea of what constitutes an important search criteria?"

Another question is, "Even if my Search Engine proves flexible enough to satisfy these Users, what happens when a Query returns hundreds or perhaps even thousands of records? How can I control the results of a Query without knowing beforehand how much data it will return?"

No matter how much bandwidth you have, it doesn't make sense to clog up the pipeline and overwhelm the User by sending him/her more information than (s)he can comfortably deal with.

Fortunately, as it turns out, heitml delivers Application Components for searching and scrolling that are designed to provide answers to those exact questions.


This page was dynamically generated by the web application development tool RADpage of H.E.I. H.E.I. provides support, tools, and services like Webdesign in Mannheimm, the HTML/CSS 3D WebGL Animation Library taccgl, 3D Webdesign, and 3D Product Configurator (3D Produkt Konfigurator in German).

Selected blog articles : 3D Objects on HTML pages, CSS Transition Visibility, and CSS Transition Display.


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