Improve performance of SQL environment for basic operations (reduce freezes)

When using the SQL environment for even basic commands, there can be slight UI freezes. I've replicated this myself and also gotten reports via users (who may be experiencing more major freezes).

We don't do any of the SQL execution in a worker thread, so that would be one approach. We could also profile to see where the slowdown is coming from.

No file, test, or specific entry point is named. Start by profiling basic SQL commands and tracing the SQL execution path to identify the source of UI freezes; done means basic SQL operations no longer noticeably freeze the interface.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.