VA05 Performance issues & search indices

Question

All,
We have a performance issue with transaction VA05 (list of sales orders). On searching SAP notes as well as all forums, no information relevant to our case could be found, so posting it here.
When we run VA05 with selection criteria - customer purchase order number (BSTKD), sales area (VKORG, VTWEG, SPART), the search takes about 5 min or more and times out for some selections. However when I terminate the transaction and rerun it by leaving VTWEG and SPART blank (or VTWEG alone blank), the search is surprisingly quicker - about 5 sec.
An input from our ABAP expert is that ideally VBKD data (based on BSTKD) should be read first and this data should be further filtered after reading VBAK; however transaction VA05 reads both tables independently, i.e. fetches handful records from VBKD for matching BSTKD and several thousands of records from VBAK (matching VKORG, VTWEG, SPART) and then does an 'intersection'. So it is this VBAK table that seems to cause the performance issue.
So we updated statistics of both tables, changed the estimate % from 1 to 10 still there is no improvement. What I don't understand is when only BSTKD and VKORG (VKORG is mandatory) are chosen, the search is much quicker though it is the same two tables relevant for search in both cases.  It couldn't have always been this way because this dip in performance is a phenomenon identified only recently.
Can someone please throw some light on this or advise how performance can be improved with complete sales area in selection? (sales area is required in selection as VA05 is used by different businesses)
Thanks & Regards,
KC
SAP SD Analyst

Answer 1

>
Krishna Chandika wrote:
> All,
> We have a performance issue with transaction VA05 (list of sales orders). On searching SAP notes as well as all forums, no information relevant to our case could be found, so posting it here.
What about note 878680?
If this doesn't help, you should send it to SAP. How can the forum help??
Rob