Searching a database

[thehumantrashcan]

Hi,

This is the first database I have ever created, so please bear with me.

I've created a simple database with 1 column and about 80,000 rows. In each row is a word (basically a dictionary without definitions).

I have written a query which works, and is, as follows (you'll notice that i'm not the most original of people)

SELECT
word
FROM dbo.words
WHERE word= 'hello'

This finds the word hello.

In excel I have a row with 25 letters and then a column with every single combination of letters from 3 to 10 lettered words. (It makes sense to me!)

This comes back with a lot of possibilities (thousands), but is great in the sense that when I change any of the 25 letters the entire column automatically updates.

What I am trying to do is then take all of these possibilities and compare them against the dictionary.

I have written a line in excel which automatically creates a cell a bit like this, for the first couple of thousand possibilities:

WHERE word= 'abc' or word= 'fgm' or word= 'klm' or word= 'pqr' or word= 'uvw' or word= 'bcd' or word= 'ghi' or word= 'lmn' or word= 'qrs' or word= 'vwx'

I then whack this into the query from above and off it goes. The only problem is that the search takes ages, and because of limitations in excel I can't put more than a thousand or so words in the cell.

I am certain there is a faster way of searching through all the possibilities, any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

[moldster]

Hi,

Have you got an Index on the Word column?

Cheers
C