Advanced portal filtering

[madman411]

Hello friends

I'm wanting to incorporate a filtering technique into a portal that displays orders in the system using a standard set of checkboxes to create the criteria. There needs to be two variables the user can enter "Search Variable A" and "Search Variable B":

1 (Via checkboxes/drop down along side a field for the user to enter their values) -- Order ID, Order Description, Client, Project Name, Contact

2 (Checkboxes/drop down) -- Pending, Estimate/Quote, Invoice, Completed (this option two would help constrain the results)

Completion/selection of one or more of the above should filter down the results.

From my understanding, using the standard portal filter option is very taxing on the computer itself, particularly with many related records (as I'm expecting), so this then makes me believe this could be achieved via the relationship graph.

Help much appreciated.