The essence of efficient searching is to index your search documents (slow) and then search your index to find these docs (faster). You need to update your index of course to keep pace with changes to your docs. No matter how you cut it searching a large amount of data takes time. You save real time by avoiding unnecessary repetition (ie only re-index updated docs). You save user time by doing the drudge work in advance. The trick is to kid the user that it is fast by doing stuff when they are not looking!

See the already mentioned links for more details. A relational database index is likey to scale better and work more reliably than a flat file index.

cheers

tachyon

s&&rsenoyhcatreve&&&s&n.+t&"$'$`$\"$\&"&ee&&y&srve&&d&&print