Tables Built for Search Requests

When a user executes a database search for library items, the CML application creates a temporary table to house the results. For each search request run, a new temporary table is created. These tables reside in the database, on disk. Each table is limited in size to a maximum number of records.

Naming Search Tables

The names of the temporary search tables are generated automatically. They are formed from a combination of a random number and the current time of day. This method makes it very likely that each table will have a unique name in the database.

A method even more likely to produce unique table names would have been to concatenate the name of the library user with the time of day. This method was not chosen because the functionality for retrieving user name (through the UserInfo component) was not yet available when the code for creating temporary search tables was written. Also, using a user name would prevent users who had chosen not to install the UserInfo object from searching the database. According to design, all users can search the database, but cannot request materials without identification.