At 03:59 PM 20/02/2003 +1000, you wrote:

>We used Firebird workbench and found that if we data-pumped the whole lot out
>and back in it ran much faster. What had been taking 9s was taking <2s.
>
>So, explain that! Especially if it helps us to tweak our DB.

Oh, it helps. Your indexes got rebuilt in the process of emptying and
refilling....It seems as if you need to pay close attention to the indexes
your database inherited from its Paradoxical past, or you will be right
back there quite soon. Go back to Svein's suggestions, and to my warning
about duplicate indexes, and start pruning and grafting.

A relational DBMS it won't perform well if you retain the hierarchical key
structures that were needed for Paradox to implement dependencies. Look
there, too, because those indexes form long chains of duplicates which will
furball your queries to a standstill.

regards
heLen