Slow performance-Full text search

[Arjun Shastry]

Hi,
For reporting purpose I am displaying some records in browser from one database(MSSQL) table based on some criteria.The fields which I am comparing contain 12-13 character strings.In select query I am comparing the values of these fields.If the total records are less say 100000,it works perfectly but total records are more than 500000(which will be the case in 'production'),getting the results take 'long' like 18-19 secods time.
Query is very simple,Supoose table T and attributes are A1.....An.and A1 and A2 are attributes which I am using in select query:

"select top (1)A4,A6,A8 from T where A1 like '%input1%' and A2 like '%input%' "  
  

Any idea on how to improve the performance?

[Paul Sturrock]

Any idea on how to improve the performance?

Have you tried running the query in your database's profiling tool? Most DBs will suggest if indices are needed to improve performance, which is probably the case in this instance.

As an aside, if you have a distinct requirement to provide free text searching over your data it makes sense not to implement this in the database itself, but with a third party IR tool like Lucene.