Which control to choose apart from DropDownList for large records

I have a UI in which I am using a DropDownList which is pulling from one table and one column. Now this column has lots of records. Probably 1000+.

Now which control should I u开发者_Go百科se?

1000 records in a DropDownList is ridiculous.

Can you break it down?

Are items categorized so you could use a cascading drop down, similar to how you search for cars by YEAR, MAKE, MODEL.

If not, then perhaps show the items as a list of Checkboxes and add paging and sorting.

an auto complete box (like the one described here) could be a good choice. Make sure to set an appropriate delay and a minimum number of characters before searching. You could also limit the number of returned results if two many are found.