Re: Large database, slow search times

"Adrian Teasdale" <adrian@europeantenders.com> wrote in message news:000701c4911a$201d60f0$0300000a@vaio... > Hi there > > I have been given the task of integrating a search into a database we > have which contains 40 million records and I would really do with some > advice! Thanks to everyone the other day who helped us parse this same > database into mysql. > > Basically the database consists of only 1 field that stores a set of > character strings. I need to be able to do a wildcard search that will > find any matches, so if I'm looking for any matches containing "ABC" > then it should pull up the record "123ABCDEFG". Now, I know that under > normal circumstances this wouldn't be too bad, but under this database > I'm getting search times of 3.5 minutes just to run one search. > Considering that there might be 500 users interested in doing searches > on this info, 500 x 3.5 minutes per search is too much. Just wondering > what the experts would suggest for managing a database this size and > getting the search times down to something manageable. > > Thanks in advance for your advice > > Ade Have you put an index on the column? Regards, Torsten Roehr