Re: Creating an Index

[Ann-Marie Otoole]

I have a column that is UNIQUE, it is a descriptinve field describing the contents. There is no doubt it is UNIQUE. But as a novice it just seems logical to me that creating a primary index on a field that bears virtually no mathematicl or logical relationship to the data being extracted would provide no increase in searching efficiency and in fact would be a hinderance.

As a novice I am experimenting on using an index on a non-unique column that is directly related to the data being requested. However it is very difficult to come up with empirical results that show if it made any improvement on processing time. It gets accessed between 10 and 12 million times a month so any improvement is worth while especiall since the data queries come in from about 200 sites at random times and occasionally synchronize and bounce due to congestion.