I've been building some software that reads/writes spatial and non-spatial data out of our SQL SDEs dynamically when called. As I've pointed out before Time Delay in Importing ArcPy , ArcPy takes forever to import. This has become an issue with my users as the querying and writing tools are too slow for their day to day use.
I am reading and writing data to tables and spatial features within the SDEs using ArcPy cursors (search, update). I've found that cursors work best for the reading and writing of data within SDEs, but I am hoping there is a quicker way without ArcPy.