Displaying search results dynamically as use interacts with controls

I have a website and want to display search results dynamically meaning that as the user interacts with controls and selects options, the search results are populated in realtime - i.e. the user doesnt need to click the search button.

The data is stored in a MySQL relational data base.

Now I know this is likely to lead开发者_C百科 to a large server load for a user-set above a certain size - are there anyways to mitigate this?

Max.

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One way to mitigate the server load would be to introduce a slight timer delay before posting back to the server after each control is populated. If you give the user 3 seconds or so to input an additional field, the user may have time to add a search parameter. That could eliminate an extraneous query or two.

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Also I always like to set a max numbers of results returned.