Time limit between searches

[2005]

I noticed that some forums limit time between searches. What is the reason to do so?

[_uk_stuff]

To stop denial of service attacks...

If someone wanted to they could continually search the forum and occupy the whole Database Servers time stopping all other users accessing it.

[2005]

But...

Php script connects to DB anyway - to check time between searches.

[_uk_stuff]

I don't know the mechanism used by all forums, but the ones that I have seen store the last datetime of the search execution for the user within a session variable. So when trying to start another search it does a quick comparison. This doesn't need to then ask the DB server anything.

[2005]

Thank you [uk]stuff.

I am writing a search script for my forum and asked this to know if I need to control time between searches.