Generally that sort of thing IME is a sign that you're got a hardcore SQL but who isn't as good as they think and / or a poor SQL dialect. I've known far, far l

Generally that sort of thing IME is a sign that you're got a hardcore SQL but who isn't as good as they think and / or a poor SQL dialect. I've known far, far larger things than that written in pure server side SQL (often made more readable by breaking it into sub-queries, table variables and common table expressions) that were very, very fast. SQL is much more powerful than many realise, but there's a great many developers who aren't as good at it as they think.