...is something often done poorly, but let's not get onto that right now.
Consider throwing out your DBMS and just employ a lot of people to read through card decks. How about that as a solution? Well, after a while I guess each person would learn to deal with the requirements they face - they would probably start ordering their decks in a "most frequently accessed" order. In fact, the order itself would then yield useful information.
Back in our automated world, when you consider what order (primary key?) to assign to a table, rather than 'alphabetical' or 'geographical', why not consider 'access frequency' as part of your key. Something the database knows about, and something that helps you put the most used cards "at the front" (whatever that might mean).
