[tragomaskhalos]

As a corollary to this, there is the infamous:

Client/front end guys: "you need to fix this query, it takes 10 minutes to run and the front end is timing out"

DBA: "err, this query wants to return 50,000 rows"

C/FEG: "yes, and?"

DBA: "what in blue blazes is your UI, or a user, going to do with 50,000 rows?"

C/FEG: "oh - we hadn't thought about that ..."

[SulphurSmell]

Ok, story time. Worked on a near-real-time system that processed millions of rows an hour. Devs routinely did a "select " and pulled 100K rows into an array on a local client. And they sorted it there*. The DBAs never looked into these because a)no resource issue, b)no perf issues and (most relevant) c) no one complained. One day this silliness was identified, and a quick meeting with the devs and DBA resulted. SQL 101. As if by magic, the client app was suddenly 3X more performant. The devs were applauded and there was much happiness in user-land. Only the SVP knew the truth...we left the sun shining on the developers. It was a rough week.