Re: name search query speed

Jeremiah Jahn wrote:
> I have about 5M names stored on my DB. Currently the searches are very
> quick unless, they are on a very common last name ie. SMITH. The Index
> is always used, but I still hit 10-20 seconds on a SMITH or Jones
> search, and I average about 6 searches a second and max out at about
> 30/s. Any suggestions on how I could arrange things to make this search
> quicker? I have 4gb of mem on a raid 5 w/ 3 drives. I'm hoping that I
> can increase this speed w/o a HW upgrade.
>
> thanx,
> -jj-
>

is there a chance you could benefit from indices spanning over multiple columns?
maybe the user that searches for SMITH knows more then the last name, ie first
name, location (zip code, name of city, etc.)?