Is it a good idea to pop-up a dialog asking for a search update after click on tab?

Question

It's a desktop environment and there's one slow query with lots of joins. It currently executes when the user clicks a specific tab - instead of having to open the tab, and then click a button.

But if the user only wants to check an already inserted info, it will do the search again.

Three possibilities:

1. Confirm dialog: "Do you wish to update the search?" Options: Yes or No

2. Build a Search button again and execute the query only on click (our default approach)

3. Execute the query after n minutes

Answer 1

Place an "Update results" button, on top of the result list, so the user is aware that there might be newer results and he is the one who decides to update them.

About your options:

• Confirm dialog. This can be "disturbing" if the user just wanted to check the old result list.
• Search again. I'm not sure if this is meant as the update button I was commenting or the result list will be emptied and the user has to search again. If the second, then it doesn't seem correct to me to take out the old results. About the first one, it might be better to call it update as the search query is the same.
• Autoupdate. Even if this was implemented the user wouldn't be sure the query was updated automatically for him. Either placing a "Results updated 3 minutes ago" or giving him the chance to do the action gives the user full information (combined with automatic updates, this depends on the case).