I have been told that SQL Native Client is supposed to be faster than the OLEDB drivers. So I put together a utility to do a load-test between the two - and am getting
While it certainly could be at the database end, I think there is a lot to look at in the overall system - at least your test system. In general, it is hard to do timing if the work you are asking the database to do is very small compared to the overall work. So in general, is the database task a big job or simply the retrieval of one data item? Are you using stored procedures or simple queries? Is your test preparing any stored procedures before running the test? Do you get consistent times each time you run any test in sucession?