Search tool questions and revisions

This page contains the search tool infrequently asked questions and revision notes.

Infrequently Asked Questions

What does the .cgi extension in the search tool's url mean?

Common Gateway Interface. In this case it means the search pages are generated on-the-fly, rather than being an actual .html sourcefile somewhere. Note, however, that this document is a static .html document. It doesn't do anything fancy.

Is that why the search pages don't come up so fast?

Yup. search.cgi, where you enter your search criteria, pre-loads the form fields with acceptable criteria. These criteria are pulled from the BC's database each time the page is loaded. This way, the database can be expanded and modified any time and the search tool will just load the new information and carry on as usual.

Why pre-load the criteria? Why can't I just type "Montecristo" in the BRAND field?

Cigar terms are often in Spanish. Since the tool looks for exact textual matches, any mis-spelling or odd entry would likely result in a no matches found message. I limited the amount of input creativity to maximize your chances of finding what you're looking for.
In addition, pulling up the discrete entries like that helps us spot any errors in the database.

Why does it take a while to load the results if I request a general search, or search with no criteria?

Searches that result in big output take a while to generate and to send to your browser. There are currently over 2500 records in the cigar database. Bob Curtis deserves wild applause for maintaining that information. It's a monster.

Revisions and bugfixes

Nov 5, 1996	*Cigar name pull-down forced to 5 options (see below).
Oct 30, 1996	*Brand name pull-down forced to 5 options to fix weird off-the-screen display in some flavors of Mosaic and NetScrape in the various Unices.
Oct 14, 1996	*Abbreviation key added to the top of the search report.
Sep 23, 1996	Wrapper code re-written again Blank data forced into fields because some browsers were omitting the blank fields *Bugs persist in indexing for non-NS 3.0 users. :(
Sep 22, 1996	Wrapper bug squashed `Filler` criterion routine changed so looking for Mexican filler, for example, will show both pure Mexican filler and blends that include Mexican tobacco. *Search tool link placed in the Resource Library
Sep 21, 1996	Search tool goes live on the www.cigargroup.com site Length fields in the database changed to decimal from fractional. This allows the length searches to be much more predictable.
Sep 20, 1996	First working implementation.

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