Advice on creating recordset

[dee-u]

In the technique of showing all the records that matches what is typed by a user in a search textbox or something what is more appropriate to use, create a recordset as the user types or create a recordset before the user types and just use a filtering?

Thanks!

[mendhak]

Use filtering. Less calls and load on your poor server.

[si_the_geek]

It depends on several factors... such as how much data you have, which DBMS you are using, how much will be eliminated by the search conditions, how you want the program to work, and network issues.

If lots of data will be eliminated by searching, the best bet (if using a 'proper' DBMS) will usually be to let the server do the work, as it is much more efficient than a client side filter.

If you want to show updates as somebody types each letter, then a client side filter may be best as (hopefully) the filter will be clever enough to realise that only the data already shown needs to be searched.

Returning a decent sized data set over a "slow" connection will not be very quick, and a filter is not as fast as a decent server (such as SQL Server) will do the same work. Even if the server is on the same LAN, returning lots of data will slow down other peoples network speeds - which may or may not be acceptable.

[dee-u]

It depends on several factors... such as how much data you have, which DBMS you are using, how much will be eliminated by the search conditions, how you want the program to work, and network issues.

If lots of data will be eliminated by searching, the best bet (if using a 'proper' DBMS) will usually be to let the server do the work, as it is much more efficient than a client side filter.

If you want to show updates as somebody types each letter, then a client side filter may be best as (hopefully) the filter will be clever enough to realise that only the data already shown needs to be searched.

Returning a decent sized data set over a "slow" connection will not be very quick, and a filter is not as fast as a decent server (such as SQL Server) will do the same work. Even if the server is on the same LAN, returning lots of data will slow down other peoples network speeds - which may or may not be acceptable.

I'm using SQL Server, does that mean creating a recordset at each typed character is just fine?

[si_the_geek]

If you are intending to update for each typed character then it is probably better to filter the recordset.