Jeremy D. Miller -- The Shade Tree Developer

Ops!

:-|

Sorry, I started the conversation :-)

sprocs can be useful for specific tasks (like for scheduled database maintenance, big batch updates), but 99.9% of the sprocs I come across are not in that category :(  just yesterday I fixed a bug in a sproc that was 300 lines of the same basic query duplicated 10 times with very small variation.

The Microsoft stored procedure "best practice" recommendation still part of a lot of .NET developers mindset.

arguing sprocs: +1 to just letting the argument go away.  The DBAs will never agree, they need job security.  Its just not worth the time arguing about it.  I prefer just keeping an uneasy truce with them, let them think that they're so important to the organization, while I just get my work done in the most direct fashion I can manage (usually a mix of dynamic parameterized sql and stored procs).  Some day, they'll all (99% of them anyway) be replaced by a series of very small shell scripts anyway.  We should pity them.

Stored procedures are terrible, terrible, terrible.  They embed business rules in a layer that has not been abstracted, make mocking impossible, violate every sense of layering and more. This is not negotiable, this is bad design creating fragile implementations. Always code to a persistence abstraction. Period. As far as the DBA's go, let's face it folks, we're 5-10 years away from obsoleting RDBMS, there just won't be a need.

You're not going to talk about it by mentioning it?  Interesting.

One thing to keep in mind though, is that the pool of developers is ever increasing.  While you and I might have already gone around and around on topics like this, this topic is genuinely new for other people, and a topic of concern (perhaps in the workplace).  Even if they've read the Frans' inspired threads of the past (among others), they still might need to exercise their voices.

Even if it is annoying to others.

jdn

Jeremy, you're always a reasonable voice.  Don't pull a Bellware with such bold statements as "absolutely nothing new" ;).  Seriously, you're mostly right.  However, I've found myself writing a couple here and there now that Linq to SQL makes it so easy to use them.  Prior to this, I would never touch them.  With Linq, they're abstracted with a method call, so they're still testable.  And like it or not, they are very performant if written correctly.

lol... I agree on the CRUD thing.  I would (almost) NEVER write a proc for basic crud.  I'm talking about unusual needs where a proc will run faster or be a better fit for what I'm trying to do.  Where I need to shave milliseconds off a call for whatever reason.  In the course of two production apps, I've probably used three sprocs.  But, when thinking about new developers, or at least, new-to-the-conversation developers, I think we all have to be careful to act as if there can never be exceptions to generally accepted principles.  To do so is to 1) wrongly close ourselves to new thoughts on old ideas, and 2) make it harder for a reader to handle said exceptions because they're told that certain "principles" can never be broken.

Keep up the good work,

John

I agree that there has been so much written on the subject that it really is getting to be too much focus on the one subject. Better to spend the time building solutions than arguing. For the newcomers, there is plenty to read by doing simple searches. I think what Jeremy is saying is that there has been nothing _new_ written, so there is no point continuing to rehash the arguments over and over again. Let the existing body of explanations and discussion serve for all to read through.

I am just on the verge of entering into the debate at my new (3 months) job. We’ll see how it goes, but I suspect that I will have to deal with all the old the arguments. I like your idea of just letting it go, and not trying to convert anyone that will not listen, read, or learn. I intend to just quietly introduce the ORM model and see what happens. I am tired overhearing comments to the affect that “the sproc wasn’t updated for some reason…..” etc.