>Doing those calculus in real time is impossible because is to much time consuming. My idea, in this
>case, is to make those comparisons previously and store them in Firebird database

Perhaps it's possible: Another approach:

Think of using the Rubicon search engine from www.tamaracka.com<http://www.tamaracka.com/> (I developed that application: Sageolit Uses Rubicon)

What you basically do is to do a Rubicon indexing of the code tables. You mentioned:

* Material (7 classification)
* Hole type (3 different holes)
* shoulder type (3)
* chamfer type
* insulation type
* terminal type
* shape

You will create indexes ~mat7, ~hol2, ~sho1 if record 1 uses material with foreign key 7, hole with foreign key 2, shoulder with foreign 1, etc.

~mat7 index in the words table will point to all the records where the foreign key = 7 of the materials table, etc. Therefore your words table will be very small.

So if you search, your search string will be something like: ~mat7 ~hol2 ~sho1 or perhaps: (~mat7 and ~hol2) and not ~shol1

Obviously the user will never see this funny search strings, he will use familiar windows controls, e.g. drop-down boxes etc.

The search speed is about 5000 x faster that SQL-search and also this way, your program will be simple and you can have limitless search combinations.

It's easy enough to test this approach by creating a test database by using random number generators. Remember to use IBObjects as the db driver. IBX will be problematic if you implement connection pooling.





Regards,



Nols Smit



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