Although I received many responses, it was ESRI who helped me in solving my
speed issue with our City's thematic maps. ESRI strongly suggested I create
an index on the field in Access that I used to join to the shape file. I was
also instructed to create a spatial index on the shape file itself. The
speed was greatly enhanced with just the index within Access, but I still
created the spatial index. The difference is amazing!!! The redraw is back
to just a couple of seconds now, just like it was in ArcView 3.2a--even
though I didn't have these indexes in place with 3.2a

My original question: Our City is just moving from ArcView 3.2a to 8.1. I am
extremely disappointed in the great length of time 8.1 uses to draw a
thematic map layer that is joined off another table. What used to take
virtually seconds to draw in 3.2a now takes well over 5 minutes in 8.1. The
same thing occurs for the redraw if I change zooms. We are creating a large
series of thematics off our Parcel layer (over 14,000 parcels and counting
as we are still converting our parcels). We are getting our attribute data
by joining this shape file to an Access database. I have both 3.2a and 8.1
on the same computer--1 gigHz and 256 mgs ram, NT 4.0 SP6. I have both
applications pointing to the same exact shape files and Access database so I
can compare the speed. Any ideas on how to speed up 8.1 so I don't go crazy?


Liz Wojdak
GIS Project Manager,
Information Technology Services Division, City of Pasadena
(626)744-6816  (626)396-8531--FAX
lwojdak@ci.pasadena.ca.us
"The man who has no inner life is the slave of his surroundings." - Henri
Frederic Amiel, Swiss critic (1821-1881).