Having said that, I do wonder to what degree various database engines are aware of the underlying disk platforms. I've definitely noticed that when optimizing

Having said that, I do wonder to what degree various database engines are aware of the underlying disk platforms. I've definitely noticed that when optimizing a query and deciding between a high number of seeks vs. a table scan, older versions of MSSQL will tend to be pessimistic of drive latencies and just go with the full scan (potentially incorrectly / prematurely). In an uncached scenario on an SSD, this is probably sub-optimal. My guess would be that instead of looking at actual seek latency, the optimizer was using reasonable guesses for spinning disks. I'm guessing newer versions are more SSD aware though.