I appreciate the overall message of "take a step back". This can be used in a lot of situatations when any problem arrises. Gather information and properly aim to identify the issue before fixing it. I guess thats where the "theoretical" part comes in. Are you fixing the real problem, or are you just chasing your tail?

That's what I find frustrating. There is a lot of over-the-top activities developers seem to engage in the name of "better performance" or "best practices". Rerunning queries multiple times and clearing the cache? Is that REALLY necessary every time? That just leads me to believe that the developer really doesn't know what they are doing, and they are merely hunting and pecking towards a faster result with little regard for data accuracy.

Finally, there were three letters auspiciously missing from the support call example. D-B-A. Where was she in all this? And, no, a developer with t-sql skills does not a DBA make.