Now that I know I can post, let me state at least some of what I stated broefe.The thinking patterns of a person is something that is learned over time and is driven by success and motivation and curiosity. Success , of course, does not necessairly mean the greatest success to be had, but some success.Outside of people like you and I, most get rather lazy about thinking and once they become somewhat successful are reluctant to improve further.Optimizing SQL require one of two approaches: (a) an intimate knowledge of how the underlying database works basically, how it will parse the SQL, how it will attempt to optimize the SQL, how it will attempt to match it to indexes and the like. The other approach is by trial and error .Alas, SQL, if my may say so myself, sucks as a language. Basically, it works hard at trying to hide all the low-level machinations of the database system; yet you can't write good SQL unless you deal with those low-level machinations!!! The very fact that it hides these details makes it even trickier to optimize, because its optimizer is trying to be a one size fits all , and it has to guess about a lot.Indeed, in optimizing SQL, not only are you dealing with the low-level machinations, but you are also dealing with the default assumptions of its optimizer, as well! It's kinda insane having to work around both.So, that certain data analyist will never be able to deal with all of these complications. He is to be understood, actually, because he is actually trying to use SQL in the way it was intended so as to not have to deal with all the low-level details that he shouldn't have to deal with anyway.Alas, this is really the failing of many, if not most computer languages, ORMs, and other systems designed to simplify and to hide complexity to really effectively use them eventually you have to understand the complexity it's trying to hide you from, and worse how it's trying to hide you from it!!!!!It's amazing how little has changed over the years. I ran into these same issues dealing with Microsoft's infamous MFC framework, and even Java. I had to deal with this in my C and C++ days, and also had to deal with it when I wrote a lot of PHP code.So, for just kicking it around, the SQL language it great! But when you get serious that all the limitations comes to the fore. And this is true of nearl everything in computerdom.My, this came out quite a bit different from what I wote broefe!