: How does defining fields that may not be used affect an index? not much. there is a trivial amount of overhead in the IndexSchema object that contributes to fieled lookps when indxing, and obviously things like hte schema browser are affected, but unused fields shouldn't influence search performance at all.
honestly: i doubt you would be able to measure any distinction even if you declared 10,000 unused fields in your schema.xml : Do copyFields effect performance of an index? they make it bigger, and they contribute to indexing speed. -Hoss
