Hi,

It depends on your needs, but basically if you need to do this kind of stuff, I would really thing about indexing the data.

You are not talking the nature of the data, neither where it comes from, mean, if it can be indexed on a RDBMS, if it is already there; or simply on the filesystem, indexing it in a file for later extracting data from it.

Take a look at Swish-e, I know they're also other alternatives... but... it could be enough for your needs.

Regards,