Problem - slow indexing on FMP 5 (when indexing millions of rows).

Question - Would FMPro Server 5.5 or anything else help?

I have a PowerMac G4/733 with 1.5 gigs of RAM, and I have allocated 500 megs of RAM to FileMaker Pro 5.

I have a new database where I imported 5.5 million rows. The import only took about an hour and a half.

But I then had to create indexes on three columns (fields) out of 30 columns. And, by looking at how slow the index build is taking, it will take ~81 hours to complete.

Since I will be updating (and possibly re-creating) this database weekly, I need a faster way to build these indexes.

What do I need to do in order to speed up index-building? Would it be better if I switched to FileMaker Server 5.5? Is there a performance gain user the Server version versus FMPro 5?

Do I need to buy FMPro 5.5 and run it under OS X?

Or - would it help if I installed a fast-wide SCSI drive for the database - or do I need dual processors? I was going to load it all into RAM, but the database is over 1.5 gigs in size and my Mac won't support a RAM disk larger than 256 megs. I can't seem to find a commerical RAM disk product that would allow me to purchase several gigs of RAM and do the processing in RAM.

I am not sure what performance gains I can achieve - but I will try anything. Any performance tips or explainations would be appreciated!

Thanks!

Tony

I just replied to this somewhere else...