CareerCup

I think you guys need to think about filesystems and other OS components.

Not everything in computer is implemented using hast table.

In case of spotlight if you see wiki the underlying data structure is B trees.

Think in that direction what factor apart from B trees would be a performance hit.

Hint: think about filesystems

Interviewer asked what parameter you'll consider so I would suggest, lets break down our performance analysis into 3 categories.
1. Hardware:
not enough memory, cpu utilisation by another process, number of page faults due to insufficient memory.

2. Software
Running time analysis of algorithm used in searching, suggest use of appropriate data structure or algorithm if not used.

3. Network.
If data coming from some remote site, look for optimisation of network calls, some design patterns for searching on remote site. etc..

from user searching perspective :
file type, when modified, created ,file size etc

From programers perspective:
creating indices on contents

parameters for performance is 1. use appropriate searching algorithm according to size of content. 2. make a hash table or hash map of contents which will make searching fast.