I'm using Sybase 12.5.3 (ASE); I'm new to Sybase though I've worked with MSSQL pretty extensively. I'm running into a scenario where a stored procedure is really very slow. I've traced the issue to a single SELECT stmt for a relatively large table. Modifying that statement dramatically improves the performance of the procedure (and reverting it drastically slows it down; i.e., the SELECT stmt is definitely the culprit).

-- Sybase optimizes and uses multi-column index... fast!<br>
SELECT ID,status,dateTime
FROM myTable
WHERE status in ('NEW','SENT')
ORDER BY ID

-- Sybase does not use index and does very slow table scan<br>
SELECT ID,status,dateTime
FROM myTable
WHERE status in (select status from allowableStatusValues)
ORDER BY ID

The code above is an adapted/simplified version of the actual code. Note that I've already tried recompiling the procedure, updating statistics, etc.

I have no idea why Sybase ASE would choose an index only when strings are hard-coded and choose a table scan when choosing from another table. Someone please give me a clue, and thank you in advance.