whillwpg

This is very strange. Today, our database seems to work perfectly. After a couple of longish searches using a Subject and progressively smaller Descriptions, suddenly we are getting almost instantaneous response on all searches. The query on subject "hockey" and description "orr" (15 hits) executes immediateley, and so does "buildings" with "fire" (1260 hits), etc. Would this phenonmenon have anything to do with FM5 building field indexes? Does anyone know how this beast works? Any literature out there that explains how it works under the covers?

Vaughan, thanks a bunch. I know that relational is best, but this works so simply and easily over an internal network (but not under Web Publishing). It would of course be a heck of a lot of work to change everything now. Do you have any other suggestions on why Web Publishing doesn't search the same way as a direct Search in FMP5? Any way to select the result of the Subject search and then only look in its Descriptions for a text match? By the way, the site is at www.photoindex.org and then click on "archives" Wally

I have a database of 61,000 records of old photographs where users search on fields called "subject" (a repeating field of up to 10 entries) and "Description", a text field of up to fifty or so words. When searching for subject "hockey" and description "bobby orr", the correct two records are found in just a couple of seconds, but if it is only description "orr", the system whirrs for five minutes then filemaker quits with "error type 2" and the whole system (MAC G4) must be rebooted. It appears Filemaker is searching the Subject field for all records and then the Description field for all records, not just the found set for Subject. Is there any way to control this? It does NOT happen when we use Filemaker directly (i.e. not using Web Companion)