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From: billc@blia.BLI.COM (Bill Coffin)
Newsgroups: comp.databases
Subject: Re: Optimization algorithms
Message-ID: <1217@blia.BLI.COM>
Date: Wed, 10-Dec-86 13:34:10 EST
Article-I.D.: blia.1217
Posted: Wed Dec 10 13:34:10 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Dec-86 21:41:10 EST
References: <8612010047.AA14252@BORAX.LCS.MIT.EDU> <9768@sri-spam.istc.sri.com>
Distribution: world
Organization: Britton Lee, Los Gatos, CA
Lines: 10
Summary: optimizing databases


response to the article about grepping the phone list:

Most relational DBMSs will do what you want -- search on an index with
a partial key.  Most DBMSs also support rudimentary pattern matching;
much weaker than egrep, but still better than nothing.  Keep in mind
though that the very nature of pattern-matching tends to defeat 
indexing.  So, use of partial keys should be allowed in any self-respecting
DBMS, but the user should be aware that the search may degenerate into
a linear scan.  (Of course, with just 200 tuples this won't hurt much.)