FW: Indexing a file with 3,000,000 records FAST ?

[Jeff Harrison]

--- John Esak <john at valar.com> wrote:

> 
> > In addition to trying PFBIXBUILD=2 you may want to
> try
> > to build multiple indexes at the same time.
> >
> > Jeff Harrison
> > jeffaharrison at yahoo.com
> 
> Have you actually tried this? Maybe you are just
> throwing this out as an
> idea? I have tested this suggestion thoroughly on
> all sorts of machines.
> Never once has building multiple indexes
> simultaneously beaten building the
> rebuild of the same indexes one-at-a-time
> sequentially. Unlesa, you have
> multiple CPU's in which case, there is some
> benefit... but not always. If
> there is a very quiescent condition on the system
> and the first index build
> grabs the first CPU and holds it pretty successfully
> for long periods of
> time, the next build of an index startst on the 2nd
> CPU... then, sometimes,
> I've seen some improvement. Otherwise, building
> sequentially has always
> worked out as fastest "overall".
> 
> On a single CPU, with even a quiescent situation, I
> do not think building
> more than one index at at ime will save any time at
> all. Only think this
> because of long experimentation... but YMMV.
> 
> John Esak
> 

Yes, I have tried it, and yes it was on a multiple CPU
machine.  I do not remember the exact results of my
tests, but I found that I could save quite a bit of
time by doing simultaneous rebuilds.  I usually
limited it to 3 indexes at a time.

Since the original question was regarding a windows
network, I would think that If he has, say 16 PCs 
available, that he could build 16 indexes at the same
time without much of a problem - except for disk IO
and wear and tear on his sneakers. :-)

Jeff Harrison
jeffaharrison at yahoo.com

Author of JHExport and JHImport.  The easiest and
fastest ways to generate code for filePro exports and
imports.



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