queries on smi tables

hi, has anyone else noticed that in 7.X queries on the smi tables are incredibly slow? no matter what the load on the system, the following query: select dbsname from systabnames where dbsname = "bls" and tabname = "abi" takes a consistent 5 minutes or so to run. considering that this pseudo-table exists in memory, and only has a couple thousand rows, if that, *and* is indexed, this seems really out of hand. i'm using this stuff to write all kinds of utilities for dba info, and have to preface each of my scripts with an echo or a print stating that this will take some time, and to have patience. a straight select * from tabname runs like you would expect it to, but any type of relational query runs incredibly slow. anyone else seen this? mickm