In this chapter, we have explored the use of summary indexes and the commands surrounding them. While summary indexes are not always the answer, they can be very useful for particular problems. We also explored alternative approaches using CSV files for interim storage.
Summary indexes have long been a hotbed of development at Splunk, and I know there has been major work done for Splunk 5, increasing the speed of some summary queries dramatically.
In our next chapter we will dive into the configuration files that drive Splunk.
