Formula Fill Timing Issue

[David Thompson]

>The further the data column is from the key column, and the further 
>either of them are from the first column, the longer the lookup( time. 
>Since it's so easy to move field positions around in the Design Sheet 
>(Cmd-up or -dn), you might consider making them cols 1&2, at least for 
>your lookups.

In Ken's case, there were 200,000 records in each 
database, according to information provided in a 
later email. Over the course of the FormulaFill, 
the lookups( would be doing a total of 
20,000,000,000 comparisons between the key value 
and the key field. (The average lookup will find 
the record it's looking for after looking through 
half the records, and there will be 200,000 
lookups.) That's going to take an inordinately 
long time no matter where the key field is 
located. With databases that size, you want to be 
looking for any alternative to the 
lookup/formulafill combination that you can come 
up with.

Dave