Please change the way MXD's handle data connections. We recently upgraded our Oracle database to version 11, changing the database name as well as decommissioning the Oracle server. Changing the database name didn't affect the mxd performance too badly, probably took 3 times as long to open but the mxd still opened and our users were able to fix their broken connections. The problem occurred when we decommisioned the server. The MXD then took hours to open in both Arcmap as well as Catalog. I believe the mxd was searching our entire network for the server. The only solution we had to fix these was to borrow an ArcGIS license (we have concurrent licenses), disconnect from the network, open the MXD, connect to the network and fix the connection. This is painful for the 100's of mxd's we have that are pointing to the old database connection.
Please consider a better solution for fixing MXD's data connections when the server and database no longer exist on the corporate network.