[Pmwiki-users] List of backward references

Patrick R. Michaud pmichaud
Thu Feb 5 23:11:56 CST 2004


On Wed, Feb 04, 2004 at 08:57:04AM -0800, Steven Leite wrote:
> 
> > > If the page SensorSystem references the page GyroSkop, it would be nice
> > > to have an automatically generated
> > > link to SensorSystem on beneath the text of GyroSkop. It's just another
> > > click more if I just want to go back.
> 
> Sounds like a nice feature, but won't that slow down the system a lot?  It
> will now be performing a search for all other pages in the system that
> reference itself.  50% of the time the information may not be used, but the
> search will be done anyways.

It might not slow down the system significantly if page caching is 
available--in this case it would only slow the system down the first 
time a page is displayed after an edit (of any page).  After that the
page would come from the cache.

However, on a site where there are several thousand pages it may take
a significant amount of time to generate the backlinks list even once,
and without some form page caching available it may make the performance
completely intolerable.  

It might be possible to have the system automatically generate cross
indexes of page links to speed up the display of backlinks, but this
capability has never been that important to me--clicking the page
title for a list of backlinks or explicitly listing references back to
the calling pages has always been sufficient for me.

Pm



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