DISABLE.INDEX

The DISABLE.INDEX command disables update and use of one or more alternate key indices.

Format

DISABLE.INDEX filename field(s)

DISABLE.INDEX filename ALL

where

filename

is the name of the file for which the index is to be built.

field(s)

is one or more field names for which indices have been created.

The DISABLE.INDEX command disables updates and use of the index data for the named field(s). The ALL keyword can be used to disable all indices that have been created for the file.

To re-enable the index, use the BUILD.INDEX command.

This command is of use when importing a large volume of data into a file that uses indices or when performing batch processing that may update a large proportion of the records stored in the file. The performance gain of not applying effectively randomly sequenced index updates may be significantly greater than the cost of using BUILD.INDEX to rebuild the index after the data import or processing is complete because this command can optimise the sequence in which it constructs the index.