7. The article of manufacture of claim 5 wherein the query includes a “Like” clause that requires a text string search of the database record.
5. An article of manufacture comprising: a query to a database that specifies a sequential string search of a computer database record having a beginning position to search for a text string; a query optimizer that optimizes the query by determining a start position other than the beginning position of the computer database record to start the sequential string search wherein the determined starting position is based on a starting position table containing historical information of previous text string searches and the starting position is determined to be a location in the record just prior to where a percentage of records in the starting position table that match the query found the text string in previous searches; wherein the query optimizer updates the starting position table with each query that does a text string search to provide historical information for future searches; and non-transitory computer media bearing the query optimizer.