[anemic]

as you seem to have some inside information can you share some details about the database schema: is naughty field not null or nullable? what about indexing a table on a boolean column?

[logfromblammo]

Niceness is an ENUM

  'not known',
  'nice',
  'naughty',
  'nasty'

Additionally, the nice list is a bitemporal table, and CheckStatus is also an ENUM ( 'nunce', 'once', 'twice', 'more' ). Foreign keys go to the Person and Elf tables.