edev: searching (idea)

It was like a bolt of lightning striking me on the head

Searching is computationally expensive.
Why do we do it so often?

I'm assuming that it's more expensive to draw up the list of near searches, than to just search for everything2.com/?node=nate; if it isn't, then I think we need to seriously sort out how we do it. A table of node name against ID would help, allowing binary searches and stuff to be done on it, blah, blah, blah.

So if we miss the node, would it be better to output 'No exact nodes found for "hypocrates". Do you want to search for this?', which for the expense of two pages instead of one may well cut down system time. And if they want to search, they can always tick the box first time.

I don't know if this will help, as it seems from my experience to be a Webserver problem (long delays) rather than Database problems.. but it might.

anotherone abuses his editorial powers: Yes, but how do we find the e2node nate without searching? If we don't have the exact node_id, a search must be performed.

the cow abuses the power of the last-person-to-edit: We have to search, that's true. But it should be much more economical to search a list sorted by node title than to search through each node_id for the correct node. True, that's more upkeep work for the server each time a fullnode is added or renamed, as well as the possibility of becoming out-of-sync with the rest of the database, but I'd think that it'd be faster than what I assume the current method is... And maybe we should include a [id:1053200|edev: searching] type link to prevent that type of searching, if people are willing?

JayBonci: I agree with you: but is this worth the lag? (Assuming that this would help, at all, anyway).