You could always blame the storage or network teams, that seems to work well. 😀

I would like to point out that sometimes the dark art of query optimization is just that; a dark art that occasionally seems to either need an index or a few more statistics files to fix the poorly written query (queries... lets be serious if there is one there is more).

Yea, yea, you could fix the query but if you are like me or most large government agencies buying off the shelf applications; changing the query would mean invalidating the warranty and thus screwing yourself. I do try to suggest better queries but most applications will put it into the we will get to it pile and leave it as just that.

Again thanks for the great article, it lets me know I am still on the right path and that my methods are not just crazy but are established craziness by other people who do similar things to get better results.