<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"><BR>
In a message dated 5/6/03 4:54:45 PM, sanke@hrz.uni-kassel.de writes:<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BLOCKQUOTE CITE STYLE="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px" TYPE="CITE"></FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2">On Sun, 04 May 2003 James Lewes <jameslewes@comcast.net> wrote:<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
> I was thinking of using Revolution to build a catalog for a bookstore.<BR>
><BR>
> Does anyone have any suggestions on how to make it expandable and searchable<BR>
> without having to link it up to a database.<BR>
><BR>
There were already some responses to this question, among them the<BR>
suggestion to try out the find command.<BR>
<BR>
For my own purposes I tried a search routine based on the lineoffset<BR>
function.<BR>
<BR>
While fighting with the sometimes very slow speed of the old Rev<BR>
Application Overview, especially when dealing with larger number of<BR>
cards and/or controls in a stack (we had a discussion about that a long<BR>
time ago on this list), I put together a RevBrowser (and a MCBrowser for<BR>
Metacard) for better performance that included a search routine to<BR>
search all control scripts of a stack - as one of several options.<BR>
<BR>
James Lewis´s question let me take a second look at that old search<BR>
routine. I substituted text fields for controls and got a search routine<BR>
<BR>
of which I am unsure if the speed would be compatible (or tolerable) in<BR>
comparison with "real" databases. I`ll provide more information about<BR>
that aspect in a second.<BR>
<BR>
The features of that search routine are:<BR>
<BR>
During the search the following information is shown:<BR>
<BR>
- the number of cards still to be searched<BR>
- the number of fields in which the searchstring was found<BR>
- the cumulative number of hits in these fields<BR>
<BR>
When the search is completed the displayed results comprise:<BR>
<BR>
- the address of the hit: name of field, ID of field, name of card, ID<BR>
of card<BR>
- the text of the lines of the field with the found searchstring along<BR>
with the line number<BR>
- the searchstring in each found line is displayed in red<BR>
<BR>
When you click at the line of the address, the respective card of the<BR>
searched stack is immediately shown (i.e. this works apparently faster<BR>
than the routine of typing a search word into the "find" field of the<BR>
transcript dictionary).<BR>
<BR>
The question of speed for a search routine may indeed be a decisive<BR>
issue. I used an older version of the Transcript Dictionary as a test<BR>
stack.<BR>
<BR>
On a comparatively slow Windows computer with 800 MH to search the 13812<BR>
fields of the 1152 cards took 22 seconds to display the result as<BR>
described.<BR>
<BR>
The speed could probably still be optimized if you leave out some of the<BR>
information that is being searched for in the current version of the<BR>
search routine -<BR>
<BR>
I do not know whether this would be interesting to James Lewis or<BR>
others.<BR>
<BR>
Let me know offlist when you should be interested in that search<BR>
routine. I have yet to "polish" that stack to make it presentable; if<BR>
there are more than a two or three requests, I will place that stack on<BR>
our FTP-server.<BR>
<BR>
Regards,<BR>
<BR>
Wilhelm Sanke<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
<BR>
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<BR>
I would be interested in seeing the stack as I am also writing a library stack!<BR>
<BR>
Jack</FONT><FONT COLOR="#000000" FACE="Geneva" FAMILY="SANSSERIF" SIZE="2"></FONT></HTML>