hello everybody

my project is based on 8031 microcontroller .
i am storing some 1000 strings(each string has eight letters) on a atmel serial flash.all the strings will arrive to the system via rs232 serial communication.i am storing all the strings serially.
but searching for a particular string is very very slow.can somebody tell me which sorting and searching
is good and fast.also i have very less on chip RAM .
so the sorting should be done outside the system
and then downloaded via rs232.

thanking you