Have read the paper SQL Server 2005 Waits and Queues, which I guess is a locus classicus of the waits and queues methodology. The delete statement, BTW, is a DELETE FROM table WHERE ID IN (SELECT TOP 3000 ID FROM table). In themselves, the deletes are very fast. The Inserts are ordinary row level (fired by a trigger) inserts, but 1000 per minute are arriving continuously Finally, should mention that we had to add memory to our system because SS was wanting to use more than we had, so some significant sluggishness was due to having the server page to disk..