Jsf display dynamic sql search results in table

Question

i'm making a search results page that will basically mirror the contents of a database table. i dont know what the user will search for so i need to generate the table (rows, columns) dynamically. i've used 3 days on this searching my brains out and have surprisingly not found anything helpful.
example searches:
select * from member
select * from user
select * from invoices
these tables will have completely different columns. what i've done so far is return a Collection<Collection<String>> to my backing bean. the Collection<String> are the rows, i.e. the column values.
i'm not sure now how to create a dynamic table from this. any help would be greatly appreciated. fyi, i have access to richfaces as well.

Answer 1

nickleus wrote:
i'm not sure now how to create a dynamic table from this.You could always try using a JSF data scroller component.
i have access to richfaces as well.Since you have access to Richfaces, try the Richfaces Datascroller component for pagination. Have a look at this link.
example searches:
select * from memberAlso, having a query like this can spell trouble in the long term if your website is an Internet application. Even if it's an Intranet application, it's still bad if you have to display everything from a table like the example you provide. Best practice is to give the users a minimum no of rows initially - say ten - then give them an option to fetch the next ten rows through pagination. You might also need a WHERE clause to restrict the amount of data being queried from the database.