>Hi Larry this is not exactly true you can have the same response time and yet one process be more efficient that the other, for efficiency try to look to the statistics how may reads that statement done the more efficient one will have less reads to SQL SERVER less reads implicates less possibilities of encounter a lock somewhere.

Alexandre,
This implies that there is a performance boost when dealing with higher volumes of rows.

Fewer reads per row operation * More rows = Delta

As the number of rows increases, my delta should increase which translates into a performance gain. However, if fewer reads never translate into any kind of performance gain, then it isn't more efficient. It is simply a different way, IMO.

As for locks, I am talking about queries only. Unless I want to repeat the same query over and over again and issue a HOLDLOCK in my SELECT statement, I shouldn't need to worry about locks other users are holding.