There is so much that we do that I know nothing about when we start. Frankly, with everything else I have been working on I knew (and still know) very little about databases. One of our clients used the new database tool last night and observed that she thought that it took too long to get her results. Of course my initial reaction was defensive. I said, come on – it took a tremendous amount of work to get that data for you – be grateful! This is someone who has been a long time user and she pushed back (she won’t let me give her credit) and said databases can work more efficiently with indexes.

She is exactly right (and maybe that is why she is a full and I am an associate). I read up on indexes, and built a CIK, FILING_DATE and FORM_TYPE index for the FILING_TIMES database. Shazam, queries were easily 10 to 100 times faster (based on my crude time keeping).

For example, it took a little over 21 minutes to identify the SUBMISSION_TIME for all 8-K filings made between 2/2/2010 and 7/16/2015 before indexing. After indexing, it took less than 30 seconds to identify the same set of 449,795 results.

Here is the query I used to identify those filings

(FORM  LIKE '%8-%')  AND (FILING_DATE  BETWEEN '2010-02-02'  AND '2015-07-16')