Our primary application hasn't needed the performance gains offered by indexing, but our database has grown large and complex enough that we're looking at it seriously. Having only dabbled with indexing in test environments, I've got a few general and best practice questions. I've seen some comments in the archives on some of the pitfalls, e.g. the dangers of indexing remote files and indexing on correlatives with subroutines. But posts I found are at least a year old. I'm guessing there may be updated information out there. Feel free to point out that everything I'm asking is in the archives and send me there.
Some questions: * Are there guidelines for how many indices is too many for one file (assuming disk space isn't an issue)? * Does BUILD.INDEX with the ONLINE parameter work as advertised? Can it really be run while the file is being updated? * How about data consistency? I seem to remember there being concerns in earlier days of an index not always being updated correctly. * How about indexing multi/subvalued fields? I don't know that we'd want to, but is it advisable? Valuable? * We use EMC to clone our production account so we can run nightly reports off-line. The account is renamed in this process. Might that cause any index issues? The clone is read-only, so there are no updates, just queries. * I've seen mention of index corruption. Is it obvious when an index is corrupt or can it be subtle? If subtle, are there ways to detect issues before our users do? * Performance is what we're after, but are there benefits to indexing other than performance? AIX 5.3 UniData 7.1 All thoughts, comments, observations are most appreciated. Brad Schrag U.S. BANCORP made the following annotations --------------------------------------------------------------------- Electronic Privacy Notice. This e-mail, and any attachments, contains information that is, or may be, covered by electronic communications privacy laws, and is also confidential and proprietary in nature. If you are not the intended recipient, please be advised that you are legally prohibited from retaining, using, copying, distributing, or otherwise disclosing this information in any manner. Instead, please reply to the sender that you have received this communication in error, and then immediately delete it. Thank you in advance for your cooperation. --------------------------------------------------------------------- _______________________________________________ U2-Users mailing list U2-Users@listserver.u2ug.org http://listserver.u2ug.org/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
