Using Indexes to Improve Performance
As previously mentioned, indexes can help you improve your application's performance. You should create indexes on any fields you sort, group, join, or set criteria for, unless those fields contain highly repetitive data. Queries can greatly benefit from indexes, especially when indexes are created for fields included in your criteria, fields used to order the query, and fields used to join two tables that are not permanently related but are joined in a query. In fact, you should always create indexes for fields on both sides of a join. If your users are using the Find dialog box, indexes can help reduce the search time. Remember, the downsides to indexes are the disk space they require and the amount of time it takes to update them when adding, deleting, and updating records. You should always perform benchmarks with your own applications, but you will probably find indexes helpful in many situations.Chapter 3, "Relationships: Your Key to Data Integrity."