# Can someone explain sql server performance differences? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [August 15, 2007, 9:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-someone-explain-sql-server-performance-differences/112142 "2007-08-15T21:34:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![typej](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/f1d935/32.png) [@typej](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/typej)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 9:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-someone-explain-sql-server-performance-differences/112142/1 "2007-08-15T21:34:32Z")
Friends, I was wondering if any Rails/SQL Server experts could offer some help in regards to a question I had. Lately I have been getting some “timeout expired” errors in rails for some of my find\_by\_sql queries. When I load these pages, they often take upwards of 2-4 minutes and eventually they throw a timeout exception. When I run the exact same query in SQL Enterprise Manager, the queries execute in under a second. My question is, what is the difference between running a query in rails and in enterprise manager to account for the difference in computing time? Any insight would be greatly appreciated, Jin L. ---
**Author:** ![typej](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/f1d935/32.png) [@typej](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/typej)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2007, 10:12pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-someone-explain-sql-server-performance-differences/112142/2 "2007-08-15T22:12:38Z")
> execute in under a second. > > My question is, what is the difference between running a query in rails and > in enterprise manager to account for the difference in computing time? What type of query? What size is the result set? If that query is returning a million rows, AR is going to instantiate a million objects. Which is going to take a lot of time… Without having any idea what sort of query on what sort of data it’s gonna be hard to say.