>I doubt that going to SQL Server would improve the performance. You could try it. At least it would mean that you're not relying on a discountinued product for your search. IAC, you should still do this asynchronously because there will always be some kind of search request that will cause a timeout. Keep in mind that even with an async request, if the results come back right away, you can send the results to the client right away. It just takes one more hit than it would otherwise.
Well, I guess there might be some kind of rules that can be defined in order to prevent some useless long search processes. For example, on Google, no matter what you enter, it always is fast.