Hi,

> I although tested the SQL with STARTING and it runs 3-4 minutes too.
> Maybe the SQL-Statement is to complex for firebird? Why?

Without knowing your data nor your query plans, I would guess the plans were
the same and the difference in time might be for the FETCH since you may
have a lot more rows for 'TEST%'.

IBPlanalizer gives a lot of info (plan, reads, time for
prepare/execute/fetch) you could post here so we can understand better your
issue


Regards
Anderson Farias