Browseable Index

Hi – I’m not sure if this belongs in the advanced techniques section but being that i'm a beginning to intermediate ColdFusion programmer, it seems advanced to me.

I have a task that I need some help devising a strategy for. I am creating a searchable obituaries index database for a library. It will of course be searchable by such criteria as name, date, date range, etc. One of the ways that the library would like the index to be searchable is a ‘browse’ option, whereby a user could enter say the first three letters of the last name of the deceased and the display would show 15 records or so that start with last names beginning with those 3 letters.

Here is where I’m not sure how to approach this, however. The query should return all of the records in the database, however the first records displayed should be those beginning with the letters entered by the end user, with next and previous buttons to browse through the other records at will. I know how to do Next Previous records; I’m just not quite sure how to do my query(ies) or display my <cfoutput> on my initial disply so as to start with the records in that section.

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.