David,
> I have a table with 8,628,633 rows that I'd LIKE to search (ha ha).
>
> I have a very simple query:
> SELECT * FROM tableA WHERE column1 LIKE '%something%';
That's what's called an "unanchored text search". That kind of query cannot
be indexed using a regular index.
What you need is called "Full Text Indexing" or "Full Text Search". Check
out two resources:
1) contrib/tsearch in your PostgreSQL source code;
2) OpenFTS (www.openfts.org).
--
-Josh Berkus
Aglio Database Solutions
San Francisco