I'm sorry to complain folks - I know there are some good reasons for
using Yahoo groups. However, given that there are over 37,000
messages here, it seems like such a waste that the search facilities
are so inadequate.

I've just tried 3 difference searches on "cpu", "smp",
and "processor" - and the search has returned a total of 1 message.
This cannot be right. I'm sure I have seen discussions on this
before - it looks to me like it only searches the last 1,000 or so
messages.

It is great that people here are so ready to offer help. But I have
posed questions here that have received no responses at all. Maybe
my unanswered questions would have fared better if there was less
noise from people asking questions that have previously been answered
for which they could either a) search for answers themselves, or b)
be given a link to a previous discussion about their problem. If my
questions have gone unanswered, then I'm sure I'm not alone. It is
not a good recommendation for people to use Firebird if they cannot
get answers from a support group.

I'm not a C++ programmer, and I feel there is not much useful time
that I can contribute to the project. But I've been doing a lot of
advocacy for Firebird in discussions around the internet. But I'm a
bit embarrassed that I direct people to this forum only to have them
search for some information and it return nothing.

I know that there is an alternative interface to this forum on the
IBPhoenix site, and whilst it is better search interface, it is
rather strange (I think I've got the hang of it now). Moreover, it
quite often returns a posting and when one clicks on 'responses' it
says 'there are none' but paging through the search result set shows
that there are indeed responses.

Is there anything we can do about this? I would be prepared to put
some time and resources into this. Can I get a copy of the contents
of this forum? I will offer to host an alternative search interface
to try to provide people with better access to the wisdom and
experience of this forum, and hopefully remove some unnecessary
questioning. I know that I will always try to search for help first
before I ask for it, because I would prefer to use up my time than
use up that of someone else.

I would like to be able to offer the ability to search this forum,
the Mers list and the InterBase newsgroup simultaneously, and return
a result set that indicated where the hit had come from.

Would this be beneficial? Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Am I going the wrong way about searching this group?

Bernard