interMedia Text problems?

I'm wondering if anyone is bumping into this same issue...

I've created a text index in Oracle8i (Standard, NOT Enterprise). Everything appears to be configured correctly, and the index creation is successful. I can execute "context" queries against the table, and the correct results are returned.

However, the index is not being used! Though the context extensions are working, it appears that Oracle is still doing a full table scan. I've come to this conclusion based on both performance (ie., it takes 3-5 seconds to return results on a table with only 100,000 records), and based on an explain plan (which reports a full table scan).

According to Oracle support, this is a known bug -- because Oracle 8i Standard doesn't support bitmap indices, and interMedia indices don't work properly without bitmaps. According to support, I need to wait until 8.1.6, which will resolve the issue.

So: any ideas? I thought that the context SQL extensions could only work with the index -- ie, how can Oracle use the extended search semantics WITHOUT using the index? How could Oracle sell an extension (interMedia) that just doesn't work?

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks,

Michael Received on Mon Sep 27 1999 - 12:37:22 CDT