> > A somewhat related question is how large should the page size be to allow
> > me to index varchar(2048) column with UTF8 character set?
> >
> You won't be able to index that. The formula for the max. index key size
> is:
>
> (Page Size / 4) - 4
>
> There is also Ivan's key size calculator you can play around with:
> http://www.volny.cz/iprenosil/interbase/ip_ib_indexcalculator.htm

You could always use an expression index on, say, 'substring(<MyVarCharField> from 1 for 500)'. I assume this would be selective enough in the vast majority of cases (of course, you may have fields where the start is duplicated in millions of records, but then you could just index other parts of the field).

HTH,
Set