Well, there is a way to have a free text field which feeds the drop down. This will allow you to get the best of both worlds. For example:
I have an userInput named $serverFilter which is find in a FindChart as a return variable and is not used anywhere else. I can create a second userInput named $serverName which will be used to actual process. I set the second to a query type like so:
SELECT
hostname
FROM
elch.server
WHERE
hostname LIKE '${serverFilter}%'
This will return the list of servers based on your original input. Now, I know that you could create one userInput and start typing in the dropdown to which the selection will jump to the closest match. This would work if the number of records was under 9,999 records.
Another option would be to add other fields into the table. Things like datacenter location, application type, OS type, etc will help to do the same thing.
