I've got a confusing situation that I would love some help with.
I'll try to be brief. I've read Helen's book on the topic, and searched
recent posts to the list here.

I have two servers - one development on my XP laptop, one deployment on
a WinSRVR2003 (much faster) server.
I have a (probably very ineficient) Delphi App (that goes thru ASTA
connectivity, thru IBO components) into the FB Server.
The app 'batch' loads about 220,000 records from paradox format tables
into FB tables.

On the XP laptop, it runs (albiet slowly). On the 2003 server it starts
to crawl at around 20,000 inserted records, then gets so slow I need to
kill the job (and delete the rows, do a sweep, etc).
And I have ruled out that the network has anything to do with it (by
actually running the 'client' program on the server machine.. so it
mimics what happens on my laptop of course - ie hitting 127.0.0.1)
So the thing I'm really wondering is WHY this difference in behaviour
(i'm not at this moment really wondering about optimizing my uploading
process).

Investigating further I find that I have installed the exact same
version of FB on both machines. Running v1.5.2

Using DBW utility I then look at the database properties of both
servers. The Version there is a much longer string, but it is EXACTLY
the same on both servers:
WI-V6.3.2.4731 Firebird 1.5

BUT the ODS Version reports 10.0 on the (slower) server, whereas it
is 10.1 my laptop ! [note - Helens book in the 'upgrading the ods'
refers to performance increase on 1.5 if you use the 10.1 ODS, due to
indexing of system tables - so I've got to believe this has something to
do with the really poor performance my install using the 10.0 ODS is seeing]

So my question has to do with this difference. My read of the
documentation led me to believe the ODS version was more tied to the
running software ? So I would have expected them to be in sync.

The structure of the two databases are pretty much in sync. In fact at
a couple points, after testing and deciding one path to follow, I've
actually copied over the entier database (after shutting down FB), but
I've copied it FROM the Production machine, to the Development machine
(which is counterintuitive to what I mentioned above ! the server is
the OLDER version !!)

A solution of upgrading given in the book is to backup / shutdown /
upgrade the actual FB instance / restart / restore. But since my
server is already RUNNING the up to date version, I'm not sure this
makes any sense.

Sorry I lied about being brief ! Any help you can point me to is much
appreciated.

Rich