map a search: best strategy?

[Hal Mueller]

At 6:16 PM -0500 12/4/06, John Smith wrote:
>
>you're right. the search database doesn't change much but it's 
>maintained by someone else. if nothing looks good i'd have to tell 
>him- dude add x/y column, but something tells me it's not as cool.

You could keep your own table--x/y column, joined by the unique ID.

>sweet. let's see if i get this right-
>1 external server does the search and says "show blah blah"
>2 my internal server already has a shp as base layer showing all the 
>geocoded points. i simply create another dbf, do a join and overlay 
>that to show "blah blah"? (didn't quite get symbolic link. join?)

Pretty much right.

There's no real notion of a JOIN in Shapefiles.  You have to copy the 
geometry files and generate a new .DBF file.  A cheaper way to do 
that, though, is to use a symbolic link instead of a completely new 
copy, for each of the geometry files.

>can a smart wms also help here?

Maybe.  I don't have any WMS experience.  Someone else will have to 
answer that.