CFSELECT with 1000 options?? Ajax??

Question

Can anyone tell me how to handle this situation? I want to
include information about the bands in a music calendar w/o having
to re-enter the band websites or descriptions for each entry. So
the bands have their own table. The idea for data entry is to 1)
select a location 2) list dates for a month 3) have a cfselect box
with bandname associated with each date and 4) on submit loop
through and insert into database.
Unfortunately, there are like hundreds and hundreds of bands.
So putting 30 cfselect tags with 1000 options each on a page seems
ridiculous. I've thought of doing a lookup based on the band name
instead of the ID. If the name was typed incorrectly, no data, but
it would work most of the time.
What about Ajax? I know zip about Ajax, but isn't that what
is it for? Could it be done w/o spending six months learning Ajax?

Answer 1

Have either an A-Z series of links (followed by fine-tuning
from thee) or a
search.
I recommend you investigate how popular directories (eg:
Yahoo!) do it, and
emulate that sort of thing, unless you can come up with
anything better.
Hint: big companies spend big bucks on UI design, so they
will probably do
it better than the likes of you or I could come up with.
One concept could be - as you touch on - emulating a combo
box idea using
an input, and some sort of multiple select / div sort of
arrangement, and
having an AJAX call back to populate the multi-select thing
with
appropriate filtered data as the user types. Google does it.
There's quite possible already a CF-friendly solution out
there (maybe even
with CFFORM controls? Never use CFFORM meself).
Adam