Dynamic Data Sets

For some time I have been thinking that it could be extremely useful to be able to cache the results from a search and then be able to call this data set in situations where the search variable won't work or would be too slow. For lack of a better term, I will refer to this feature as DynamicDataSets. Some examples where I could see this being useful include:

• DynamicFormOptionDefinitions
• Dynamically generated menus
• Create a list of events defined anywhere throughout a web for display in a calendar.
• Maybe speeding up rendering of templates that include searches.
• Extracting all the variable syntax instructions from plugins to provide a "quick help" feature for using these.

I recognize that DBCacheContrib works something like this but doesn't seem to go quite far enough to accomplish what I'm envisioning here (if I understand it correctly). For one, it seems to be limited to caching data contained in TWiki forms. I'm talking about being able to cache the results from any kind of search - for example, creating a cache of all incidents of a particular tag such as %ACTION .

The other hurtle that would need to be addressed to achieve the functionality I envision is the ability to call up these data sets in places where normal variables don't work, such as discussed in HandleCommonTagsInFormDef. Perhaps there could be a special variable syntax for invoking these data sets so as to avoid any confusion with other TWiki variables.

Any thoughts? Do other folks see possible uses for this? Maybe it can be achieved with exisiting features?

-- LynnwoodBrown - 14 Jan 2005