Lance,

Rushmore does optimize a query when there is an index order set. I would be that your sql would take a much longer time if there indexes that Rushmore is using were not therer. Having an index order set does add to the requirements that Rushmore has to deal with. It has to read the controlling index tag into memory so it can respect the ordering of the records. Turning off the index tag does increase performance considerably, as you have seen.