Something to consider if drive space is an issue, and the entries returned by the search form all have unique ids is to serialize (by either of the methods JayBonci suggests) just the ids, rather than the entire data structure. I couldn't tell you up front, but it may either be
- Slower if it takes longer to deserlialize the ids and then call another select statement to get the actual records
- or faster, since ultimately you'd be transferring less data. First you'd only be transferring just the ids to your script, and selecting the range of ids for the current page of results. then you only have to transfer the full data for those specific records instead of for all results in the search.
The other thing I'd suggest is keying the temporary table off an md5 hash or some such of the search parameters, rather than a session (for all the reasons perrin has mentioned). This way you'll still have unique ids but you won't have issues with multiple browsers (or even multiple computers...).
