Thanks Ron, Thanks Christopher for your excellent feedback.
I guess it's back to the drawing board. This is a very late hour
business requirement change. And we need quick real-time results.
Two things are being considered:
1. loading the non aggregate query entirely into memory (using perl
cgi, currently, but looking at the possiblity of doing this in the
database with either PL/perl or PL/plsql, though I don't know what
would be gained by doing it that way). And handling the summing and
then the sort ourselves in the program, -- or --
2. preprocessing a lot of the data at pre-determined times.
Essentially doubling the size of our database.
I'd be open to any other suggestions.
Thanks again. very much.
-David
__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com