How to Optimize query elapsed time on very large scale tables

[ahrouhi]

Hi
I am working on very large scale text and numeric data. for e.g in one table i have 9 fields but in 21 million records. I want to know what should i do for obtain better efficiency on queries on the such huge tables. for example make new table query or update query...
The next question is that i want to export the 21 million records in a text file. converting by ms access is very very lengthy and finally i could not open the file. if i write a VBA code for adding records in a text file, that would be faster and safe as well? what's your idea?
I work on Access 2003 on XP platform SP3.

[pdebaets]

Do you have any indexes on the table? Maybe you can archive some of the table records? Better use of "Where" clauses?

You can always put that table (or your whole back-end) in SQL Server Express.