I  have  seen  that  several  users  tried to  use  the  BITEARN  database  on
LISTSERV@FRECP11, and  got kicked by the  CPU limit. This discouraged  most of
them, and the  remainder obviously found it  too slow to be  useful since they
abandoned it very quickly.
 
I  have just  completed the  assemblerization  of a  good deal  of the  SEARCH
command.  The date-related  keywords  (SINCE/FROM/TO) and  the complete  WHERE
clause now  get processed  in assembler.  That is, if  you do  a "Select  * in
BITEARN where (country is (F or D)  and machine contains IBM) or site contains
schule since  may 86", all of  the search gets  done in assembler. If  you had
done "Select Jenkins  <rest same as above>", the WHERE  and date clauses would
be done in assembler and then the  search for "Jenkins" would be done in REXX,
but only on the remaining entries of course.
 
Some figures (sample command: "Select * in BITEARN where country is F and site
contains ecole", which yields 3 hits):
 
- The old REXX version took 1:13 minute of CPU time to execute (4381-11).
 
- The new  version takes  only 3.6  seconds, of  which 0.75  are spent  in the
  assembler code itself (the rest is spent sending back the reply, etc).
 
- It takes 0.65 second to read the complete index file with an 'EXECIO * DISKR
  (SKIP', ie 85% of the CPU time is  spent in the CMS disk routines. This also
  means that the  critical factor is now disk speed  and channel availability,
  not brute CPU power,  and that it will take almost  the same time regardless
  of the complexity  of the WHERE clause  (the nesting level is  limited to 40
  :-) ).
 
So, you can now feel free to  make complex searches on the BITEARN database on
LISTSERV@FRECP11 *only* (LISTSERV@CEARN is still  running the old version). Be
sure to try tricky searches and to  report bugs as soon as you encounter them.
You know what happens  to an assembler program when you aimed  for the '3' key
and your finger hit '4' instead... :-)
 
  Eric