I'll add to this thread that in May of 2013, I submitted an incident which got tagged onto NIM085579, which is currently listed as Open and Assigned. This bug was created TWO YEARS AGO and it has still not been fixed. The analysts found that yes, a view created with CreateDatabaseView_management against a feature class using geometry storage (which is the default now) in SQL Server 2012 is indeed slower than command line spatial views against feature classes using sdebinary storage. The analyst I was working with at the time said (c/p from an email):
So the slower drawing time seen in the view created with SQL is expected. Please let me know if you have any questions about this.
Please, ESRI, don't be surprised when users like Joshua Bixby, me, and everyone else in this thread get frustrated on the subject of spatial views, when "it's slower now by design" is the type of response we get from Tech Support. Add to that command line tools going away, and what are we to do???
Please, please, please share the suggested workflow for making spatial views at 10.2+. And don't say saving a .lyr file is part of the solution.