Question from a DelphiDB {*word*269}...

I'm trying to design a form similar to the windows help system, where
as one types in an edit box, the choices that partially or fully match
are displayed in a listbox below.

So far i've got a TQuery component hooked to a DBlookupListbox,
and a plain-old TMemo.

When TMemo.OnChange is fired, the following code executes:

procedure TForm1.Memo1Change(Sender: TObject);
var
   MyString: String;

begin
  if Memo1.Lines.Text <> '' then
  begin
     with DataModule1.Query1 Do
      begin
          Close;
          SQL.Clear;
         SQL.Add('SELECT DESCR FROM mytable');  
        MyString := 'WHERE DESCR like upper("%' + Memo1.Lines.Text
+'%")';
         SQL.Add(MyString);
        Open;
      end;
  end;
end;

This does work, however it is _slow_. (the whole dataset is ~ 5000
records)

I'm gathering from the code what's happening is that every time a
character is entered, the event fires, the SQL statement runs through
all 5000 records and filters the ones that contain mytext
appropriately.

However, it would be much faster if I could query the results of the
previous query -- (ie, start with 5000 records, then as the person
types more of the complete search string, the number of records gets
whittled down so SQL has to search fewer records with each successive
search) -- like a bracketed search.

I am at a loss as to how to perform a SQL statement on the resultset
of a previous SQL statement.  

the docs have been less than illuminating;  any & all tips
appreciated.
adam

In article <34239444.37016...@news2.ibm.net>,

This works pretty fast, using ODBCExpress and Solid Server.

Try to use the filter property of TQuery.