We are using a mysql database w/ about 150,000 records (names) total. Our searches on the 'names' field is done through an autocomplete function in php. We have the table indexed but still feel that the searching is a bit sluggish (a few full seconds vs. something like Google Finance w/ near-instant response). We came up w/ 2 possibilities, but wanted to get more insight:

1. Can we create a bunch (many thousands or more) of stored procedures to speed up searches, or will creating that many stored procedures bog-down the db?

2. Is there a faster alternative to mysql for "select" statements (speed on inserting & updating rows isn't too important so we can sacrifice that, if necessary). I've vaguely heard of BigTable & others that don't support JOIN statements....we need JOIN statements for some of our other queries we do.

thx