Business Applications: What are the fundamental features of a search form?

Question

In a typical business application it is quite common to have forms that are used for searching.

Some basic features are:

• A pane that contains the search criteria
• A grid to display the results
• Sorting on the grid
• A detail page that opens when an item is selected in the results grid

What other features would you expect in a business application's search functionality?

Answer 1

Maybe it's a bit trite but there is some sense in this picture:

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Do it as it shown at the second example, not as at the 3rd one.

There is a well known extreme programming principle - YAGNI. I think it's absolutely appliabe to almost any problem. You always can add something new if it's necessary, but it's much more difficult to remove something what is already exist because someone already uses it even if it's wrong.

Answer 2

How about the ability to save search criteria, in order to easily re-run a search later. Or, the ability to easily, cleanly, print the list of results.