Re: Opinions on Indexing options for search capabilities

Thanks Stephane.

That's what I was thinking, but without ever having tried it before, I wasn't sure if I would wind up spinning my wheels or not.

Thanks again for the confirmation.

                               Bill Ferguson
            U.S. Geological Survey - Minerals Information Team
                           PO Box 25046, MS-750
                           Denver Federal Center
                          Denver, Colorado 80225
           Voice (303)236-8747 ext. 321     Fax   (303)236-4208
      ~ Think on a grand scale, start to implement on a small scale ~

Stephane Faroult <sfaroult_at_roughsea.com> 09/09/2006 10:46 AM
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Re: Opinions on Indexing options for search capabilities

Bill,

   I have implemented something similar for a customer several years ago. The idea was that there were some chemical products that had to be retrieved from searches on many tables, all more or less related to the base table that had a "product_id". The trick was therefore to use indeed the indexation not of base tables, but of the output of PL/SQL procedures, as long as we could relate the information to a "product_id". Fairly easy with all tables that had a FK to the product table (since the product_id was in the table, all you had to do was indeed to glue all columns together), but for tables that were referenced by the product table I had to index what was in fact the result of a join. In one case the reference was even indirect.
I am afraid that I have a very fuzzy recollection of the details, but all I can tell you it that it works, but you have to index each possible join in turn, which can possibly mean in your case 20 or 25 different indexations at least (in my case fewer than 10 tables were involved). HTH
Stéphane Faroult

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