Metacat

  <p>Metacat allows results sets to be broken up into "pages" to aid in the loading

  of large result sets and to make the result sets more readable to users.  This is

  facilitated by the addition of two variables to the parameter list.  Pagesize

  indicates how many results should be returned for a given page.  Pagestart

  indicates which page you are currently viewing.  These parameters can be

  passed to Metacat when a query is submited.  </p>

  <p>When a paged query is performed, the resultset of that query contains

  four extra fields.  Pagestart and pagesize are contained in the xml resultset

  along with nextpage and previouspage.  This allows the xslt tranformation to

  include navigational links in the rendered resultset.  Here's an example 

  xml resultset.</p>

  <pre>

    <resultset>

      <pagestart>1</pagestart>

      <pagesize>10</pagesize>

      <nextpage>2</nextpage>

      <previouspage>0</previouspage>

      <query>

      ...

      </query>

      <document>...</document>

      <document>...</document>

    </resultset>

  </pre>

  <p>In the case of the resultset, pagestart will always indicate the page you

  are currently viewing.</p>

  <p>Here's an example of the rendered result.</p>

  <img src="images/pagedquery.jpg"/>

  <p>The links to the previous and next pages look like this.</p>

  <pre>

   <a href="metacat?action=query&operator=INTERSECT&enableediting=false&anyfield=actor&qformat=kepler&pagestart=0&pagesize=10">Previous Page</a>

   <a href="metacat?action=query&operator=INTERSECT&enableediting=false&anyfield=actor&qformat=kepler&pagestart=2&pagesize=10">Next Page</a>

  </pre>

  <p>The important bits of these links are the incremented pagestart parameters.  

  The rendered page is on page 1 so the previous page is 0 and the next

  page is 2.  By sequencing through the pages, the user can see the

  entire resultset.  </p>

  <p>The Kepler skin in lib/style/skins/kepler is a good example of how to

  render the resultset with paged query returns.  The XSLT uses the four extra 

  fields in the resultset to render the next and previous links.  This could

  also be used within a non-web application.

  </p>