From your question, I would guess you are missing the point of AJAX. It is
designed primarily to enrich user experience and add usability, not to
become a secondary data transport.
My first take would be to figure out how to speed up your record processing.
No matter what data storage mechanism you are using (database server,
Access, XML) the best way to do this is to filter the results before
processing. The fewer records in the working set, the faster the query
completes. This, alone, may speed up your query so you can avoid the
timeout.
In 1.1, you have fewer choices with Asynchronous processing, as the ASP.NET
AJAX project, which has the script manager (mentioned by one of the posters)
is only available in 2.0. I am not sure which open source implementation
might have an asynch process. If none, speeding up your query, or increasing
timeout for all pages in your site, are your only options.
--
Gregory A. Beamer
MVP; MCP: +I, SE, SD, DBA
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Think outside the box!
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