On 8/9/06, Tom Laudeman <twl8n@virginia.edu> wrote:
> The speed of the query is (as Michael implies) limited to the rate at which
> the disk can seek and read. I have done experiments with views and cursors;
> there was no improvement in speed. I've also tried only pulling back
> primary keys in the hope that a smaller amount of data would more quickly be
> read into memory. No speed increase. I have also raised all the usual memory
> limits, with the expected results (slight speed improvements).
>
Are your data structures normalized? Performance problems queying a
single giganto table is usually (but not necessirly in your case) a
sign of a poorly designed table structure.
otherwise it's pretty clear you get the most bang for the buck with
hardware. consider upping ram and/or buying better disks. you could
buy cheap sata controller and 4 raptors in raid 0+1 configuration for
<1000$ and you will feel like you have supercomputer relative to what
you have now :)
merlin
