Index Management

The data retrieval time required to display a record detail or load a view containing, for example, one hundred records is typically only a fraction of a second. However, if the number of records in a catalog exceeds a certain threshold, the retrieval time for filtered or sorted data can increase significantly in some cases. This threshold can be as low as 10K records when accessing your database over a local network. This performance degradation is most noticeable when loading a view with filtering and/or sorting rules or when selecting a related record from a relational lookup field.

The solution for maintaining fast data access is to create indexes for the fields used for filtering or sorting. Be aware, however, that every index you add will slightly slow down the creation of new records and the updating/deleting of existing records. So it is definitely not a good idea to index all fields.

The Automatic Index Generation feature analyzes your database structure, identifies the fields that can potentially benefit from indexing, and creates indexes for them. It will also remove existing indexes if it determines that they do not provide a performance improvement in order to avoid the side effects mentioned above.

• Index optimization and index removal are both safe to apply and do not affect your data in any way.
  
• You are unlikely to experience any performance improvement if you have a single-user license and your database is located directly on your computer's hard drive. Similarly, no benefit is expected if none of your catalogs have more than a few thousand records.

Optimizing Indexes

Removing Indexes