"The real extraction that I need is batch oriented and did move to a new database on a new server and the result was about the same on the amount of time it took to extract the data from linked servers."

What do you mean?

You don't need to set up a linked server to extract data from AS400.

My knowledge is a bit old but I used an ODBC driver to pull data from the AS400 to

a database in SQL server. Your description indicates a speed limitation pulling out

data from AS400 so as suggested look there.

Gosta M