Mail failure

Hi I been having some problems with a query, it use to get lost in the data and never come out with anything. After many revision, now it just takes eternity to answer, thow I think the index are ok, i am not too shure that the query is using them or is is maybe the construccion which is kind of wrong. So I want to ask you specifi topics 1.- matches versus greather which is faster in a table size mediun to large. To use -- a matches "aa*" or to use -- a > a and a < b (where b is the next option) 2. to use between rather than greater and lesser in a table size medium to large like number between x and y or to use number >= x and number <= y The query that is giving me white hairs is the next one select count(*) from con_catalogo_cont a, con_partidas_det c where a.dependencia = '0014201' and a.numero_cuenta matches '100*' and a.permiso = 1 and c.dependencia = a.dependencia and c.serial_cuenta = a.serial_cuenta and c.fecha_partida between '01/01/1997' and '28/02/1997' Thanks in advance Milagro Barneond Guatemala