Probably related to why the database has millions and millions of rows in the first place. Maybe someone read about denormalization in "Super Webscale SQL!" and

Probably related to why the database has millions and millions of rows in the first place. Maybe someone read about denormalization in "Super Webscale SQL!" and blew up a trivial database. Or they're hoovering up vast quantities of garbage data and running it through a BI tract to produce bullshit. I worked at a company that bilked the government for vast sums of money by doing all this and charging them for the hardware. The guvvies knew what was going on, but their little empires were more important if they got a bigger budget, so they went along with it.