Creating a select and speed.

php4, apache, mysql. I have a form to gather input to do a search. The form contains 9 fields all of which can be filled in OR blank. Is it more beneficial(speed wise) to create the select statement by determining weather vars are set and then just using the ones that have values from the form or would the performance be acceptable by including all vars in the select and simply assinging them a '%' if blank when the form is submitted? I estimate table size to be no larger that 11 cols with 500,000 records. --------------------------------- Larry Hotchkiss