interMedia 8.1.6 performance problem

I'm using interMedia for a Web based Search engine and display the result set in groups of web pages (15 or whatever result hits per page).

The problem is that my Web application does not have any persistent data storage between pages (other than passed query string parameters), so, when the user wants to see the next set of results, I have to run the same interMedia query all over again. I've tried storing the results in a table, but have potentially hundreds of users searching at the same time --- this creates problems with latch contention -- since I am constantly updating and reading from the same blocks of the table, Oracle has to create and maintain many, many copies of the same block -- this is not a scaleable solution and with more and more users searching simultaneously every day, this is not an option.

I was considering creating a temp table per user when the user begins a session on my site -- so each user would have their own results table, eliminating any possibilties of contention. This temp table would only exist for the duration of the users session and would be used to store a particular users search results. The user could then page thru the search results, sort them, or whatever and I would only have to conduct an interMedia search one time. Whenever the user enters a new search term, the table would be truncated and the new search results written.

Does anyone have experience with this technique --- constantly creating and dropping many, many temporary tables in a large scale, heavy-use environment ? Is performance acceptable --- is it good ? Is it a drag on system resources ? Does it create other kinds of contention ?

Also, any other suggestions on how to tackle this problem ?

Thanks,
Charlie Received on Wed Jul 19 2000 - 00:00:00 CDT