On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 12:41:27 -0500, Alex J. Avriette avriette@gmail.com wrote:
As a database goes searching through its indices and tables looking for a tuple, it must iteratively go over other tuples before it finds the one it wants. It doesn't just have some magic pointer that knows where [[designated marksman]] is. It has to figure it out. When the number of articles exceeds several hundred thousand, you really need to "give it hints" about where to find that article. I don't know if this is already being done, but it might be possible to use things like categories (or some form of tagging) to "associate" groups of articles so that, while they might not have to live in their own separate table, that they were more easily "findable" by the database.
Why use categories or tagging for that? And how would it help at all. You have to have the article first before knowing what category or tag it has! A much better method, is to use the title itself as the tag, index the 'title' field, and then do a binary search on it.
No need for tagging, categories, or whatever. The only downside of it is that we are already using it, so implementing it will not make it any iota faster. But at least it doesn't slow it down either, which I fear your plans would.
Andre Engels