> > But my question is: shouldn't be Firebird able to do it itself??
>
> Yes it should.
>
> Dmitry

Much as I hold FB in very great esteem IMO this is probably the number
one area that stops FB overtaking competitors (including commercial
ones) and being sometimes overlooked.

Our app uses a general-purpose querying tool that nowadays has to
conditionally generate +0 or || '' to avoid FB using indexes(!)
that would otherwise work against good performance - this is madness.
In addition, the amount of time personally spent over recent years
trying to get the engine to perform as it is capable of has been very
great (there must be many others) when it should be dealt with at the
engine-level.

Things are continually improving and there can be no doubt the problem
must be a very difficult one to overcome - but whether the statistics
aren't being used enough, or a problem with the stats and MGA, or
something else is unknown.

Did Jim (Starkey) and the earliest Interbase developers EVER have this
problem sorted with the original architecture, does anyone know? Or
did later dev (Borland, etc) upset the code. Having worked with
FB/IB for 10 years AFAIK the problem may have been there from the
beginning.

Finally, my own personal belief is that this item should be at the
*absolute top* of any FB development work items and to stay there
until resolved.

Tom