Unrealistic customer requirement?

System

Against my advice and that of others to whom they pay good money, my customer has requested that a custom tool that I've built collect a set of files in a workarea based on their extended attributes. They also do not have TeamSite Search licensed. So, that said, the only way (that I see) to do this is to grab each file in the workarea (there are thousands in this case) and run "iwextattr -g" on them. The (lack of) performance of this app will prove my point but is there a better way of doing this that is more efficient that some of the DevNet brainiacs might know of?

Thanks,

Dave