On May 5, 2010, at 10:28 PM, Geoff Graham wrote:

> As Steve said, the work has to be done somewhere; if you can move it  
> to tiny increments as you enter the data rather than all  at once as  
> you read it - bonus.

Sue

Yes, I did say that. But of course it was an over-simplification.

In fact, if you can move the storing/indexing work to the front of the  
process – as Geoff says, into little increments as the data is entered  
– there are two gains. The first is that you probably won't notice all  
the little waits as you input the data. The second is that, once done,  
the storing/indexing work is finished. Whereas with the unstored  
method you have now, the work has to be done every time you want to  
view the data.

So this comes back also to how intensively you use this function of  
your database. If you drill down (and see the beach ball) once a day,  
then your gain may not be so great. If you are doing it dozens of  
times a day, then it's definitely going to be worth a little slowdown  
at data entry if you can speed it up.

Steve