Good news, with Firebird 1.5 it's a lot better but not as much as IB4.2 :

Here are the results :

>Firebird 1.02 with IBOConsole (Interactive SQL) :
>(page size DB = 4096)
> First execution : 00:00:50
> 2nde excution : 00:00:31
> 3rd execution : 00:00:31

Firebird 1.5 with IBOConsole (Interactive SQL) :
(page size DB = 4096)
First execution : 00:00:34
2nde excution : 00:00:22
3rd execution : 00:00:22

The tests done under IB4.2 was with an ODS 8 structure and a page size = 1024. Is a bigger page size must supply better performance ?

Cedric