Question

I have a web page that returns over 36000 items from sql server and I need ideas to filter the data. So far my ideas are paging through letters and a text search box which uses the following sql –

    select          O_ObjectID, 
                rtrim(O_Name) as O_Name
    from            A_Object
    where           O_Name like @NamePrefix + '%' OR O_Name like '% ' + @NamePrefix + '%'
    order by        O_Name

So any thoughts in which I can filter data?

Answer 1

With a possible resultset of up to 36000 rows, paging won’t help you much because no user is willing to browse more than 3 pages of search results – Honestly: Did you ever bother to click through more that 5 pages of Google search results before refining your search term?

Try to identify columns that would make up good filter criteria (besides O_Name), create a search form and limit the result to TOP 300.

Of course if your table actually only consists of O_ObjectID and O_Name you pretty much stuck with “Starts with” and “Contains” from your sample query … you could add “Ends with” just to be complete.