Optimizing file search

I have a large ( around 10 000) database of people. These people can input standard information and upload documents (pdf, .doc & .docx). When I do a freetext search, it searches through all of the peoples information fields AND their uploaded documents. Searching through ALL of the peoples documents takes so much time wicket throws an "WicketRuntimeException: After 1 minute the Pagemap null is still locked by: Thread ... "

My question is if it's possible to create a search function that can search through up to 10 000 documents without taking extremely long ti开发者_如何学运维me.

The project is running Java, with Wicket, Hibernate & Spring.

What you're describing sounds like a direct fit for Apache Lucene. Don't reinvent the wheel until you're sure that existing wheels don't meet your needs.