Re: stored procs? why?

Matt Sergeant wrote:
>>Scalability is sacrificed when the database becomes a compute engine.
>>
> 
> I can't agree with this either. The term "scalability", often used to
> refer to middle tier stuff, is vastly overrated in favour of fundamentally
> faster systems in the first place.

I would agree with that, since this is an argument I often see used to 
justify out-of-control architectures with thousands of classes: "Sure, 
it takes 5 minutes just to log in, but it will SCALE!"

However, there is a big advantage in being able to put most of the 
processing work onto middle-tier machines that are easy to load balance. 
  Scaling a big Oracle server is expensive, and pretty hard after a 
certain point.  Scaling application servers can be as simple as ordering 
another 10 Intel boxes.  This is one of my main objections to running 
stored procs.

- Perrin