In what version of Filemaker, and in what sort of deployment? A half million rows should not be particularly noticeable in a well designed system (8 or later). If the searches are against a text field, make certain they are fully indexed. That will bloat the volume, but improve performance. If there are lot of joins behind these searches, you might want to try reducing them where possible. I've built systems with large text fields in over 3 million rows without performance problems, and others have seen similar results with more records.
Not much can be done for sorts; the important thing there is to keep the recordset being sorted as small as possible. Sorting lots of records is slow on most database platforms. Nonetheless, if the system is holding a lot of old records that are rarely needed, you can archive them off into a secondary file or system. But you really shouldn't need to do so just because of a half million records. Archiving carries its own burdens-- how to decide what gets archived, how to automate it, how to grant appropriate access, when do you need some aggregate information from the archives added to the current system...? If you want to know the long-term history of an account or inventory item, archiving can cause you grief. John Weinshel Datagrace Vashon Island, WA (206) 463-1634 Member, FileMaker Business Alliance Certified For FileMaker 8 Certified For FileMaker 7 -----Original Message----- From: FileMaker Pro Discussions [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Richard S. Russell Sent: Thursday, May 15, 2008 10:11 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Files Getting Large, What To Do A wood-fabricating plant I do database work for has just cracked the half-million mark on the number of SKUs ordered by their customers. It's taking longer and longer to do little things like finds and sorts with that kind of volume. How do other folks handle situations like this? - Richard S. Russell Madison, Wisconsin=
