map a search: best strategy?

[Hal Mueller]

A bit more detail about the search would help--coding environment? 
search parameterization?  DB attributes?

Geocoding after every search will be slow, and a heavy load.  IMO you 
would do better by geocoding all of the points in your search 
database once, and storing that.

If you're willing to do some scripting, this approach might work:

1 run search
2 generate unique filename string (say "xyzzy12345")
3 create xyzzy12345.dbf with the attributes of your search
4 ln -s permgeocode.shp xyzzy12345.shp
   ln -s permgeocode.shx xyzzy12345.shx
   etc.

now you have a shapefile whose attributes are the search results for 
a particular query, and you can display it normally, without having 
to think about the fact that it came from a search query.