Do you have covering indexes for the tables that form the query/queries?

Also could you accept dirty reads from the results because a query WITH (NOLOCK) would help reduce locking and...

You can use transactional replication from the "core" tables down to the satellite versions to maintain integrity locally when you insert, delete or update the core tables.

Steve Hatchard

Director

Mattched IT Ltd

http://www.mattchedit.com