Pq Preview Sort Order... Changing?

[+caderoux]

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.asp...aa-15d4338c89fc

 

I did a PQ for all locationless. Because it doesn't specify an origin, the sort order is undefined.

 

Problem is, as you page through the results, you may see a cache on a later page which you have already seen (and miss a cache as you page through).

 

Is preview meant to be used to do any actual work like this (like find caches to add to bookmark lists or read logs of recent activity)? If so, it may need to have a consistent sort order for these types of quereies.

[+Prime Suspect]

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.asp...aa-15d4338c89fc

 

I did a PQ for all locationless.  Because it doesn't specify an origin, the sort order is undefined.

 

Problem is, as you page through the results, you may see a cache on a later page which you have already seen (and miss a cache as you page through).

 

Is preview meant to be used to do any actual work like this (like find caches to add to bookmark lists or read logs of recent activity)?  If so, it may need to have a consistent sort order for these types of quereies.

It doesn't perform the entire query and hold it in memory, waiting for you to ask for another page. So when paging through, there may be duplicates or omissions.

 

Just have the PQ results emailed to you, and you can use a GPX utility on your PC to access the data.

 

(FYI, it's pointless to post a link to your pocket query - no one but you can see it.)

Edited August 4, 2005 by Prime Suspect

[+caderoux]

I understand that the results are not stored, but the "problem" does not occur when there is sorting from an origin. To "resolve" the "problem", there would not need to be storage, just an explicit ordering (as there is in the SELECT TOP n ORDER BY distance).

 

I've been trying to use preview to do more work online and PQ emails less, as I was thinking this would put less load on the PQ server (I am running in minimal trigger-only mode - just a few PQs a week). In this case, it would seem that the pagination is functional but pretty much unreliable in the preview, as you could go back and forth through the list and never find a cache you are looking for if the cache keeps slipping onto a page you aren't viewing.

 

I'm sorry about the bad link. I thought that I had seen in previous threads ( http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...dpost&p=1202829 ) that users had posted links to stored results and that other people could then save them as their own PQs? But I see that the format is different and it has to go to the query definition page instead:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/gcquery.a...aa-15d4338c89fc

 

However, my question was about what the purpose of the preview is if you aren't specifying distance from origin? Is it just to check that the query is basically working?

[+Prime Suspect]

You're probably putting a bigger load on the system running multiple queries (by paging) than simply having it run once and emailed to you. PQs that are mailed are batched off to be handled elsewhere, so there's no impact on the interactive environment.