1) make sure that table scans are not occurring
2) an index should exist with key fields that match the fields in the WHERE clause of the SQL request
3) ODPs or Open Data Paths should be reusable
4) static SQL is better than dynamic
5) access plan rebuilds are bad
6) dynamic sorts are bad
7) access path rebuilds are bad
8) any SQL parameter conversion is bad
9) SQL timeouts are bad
10) SQL will not use logicals with select/omit criteria
11) one SQL request to select 10,000 records will perform better than 10,000 requests - one record each