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A priest, a rabbi and monk walk into a bar. The bartender looks at them and says, "What is this, a joke?"
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Quote: What is this, a joke?
Apparently not.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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The blonde sitting on the end stool says, "Well, at least it's not on me this time."
Software Zen: delete this;
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A beer for the ballerina!
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First of all, thanks very much to everyone who kicked in with thoughts regarding MVC. I'm currently doing some upgrades / installs for VS 2012 since I've been running 2010 so that I can give MVC 4 a go.
Since I'm reevaluating technologies, here's something I just don't get - but perhaps I'm missing something. A year or two ago I played with LINQ. Essentially, it's a nice little chunk of technology to move your db queries into your code.
My approach has traditionally been to use stored procedures, keeping SQL stuff in the database and procedural code / logic in the application. Why on earth would I want to move my queries into C# code?
As long as the params and columns returned don't change, I can make changes all day long in Sql Server and never touch web apps or services. If my db logic is in the code, I have to recompile and deploy the binaries every time I touch something.
I know it's the shiny new thing to play with but other than resume enhancement, I just don't see what value it brings to the table. What am I missing?
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You're thinking of LINQ as "database only" for one thing. LINQ works on other things, like anything that implements or can be cast to a IEnumerable<T> or IQueryable<t>.
LINQ also lets you build a query, piece by piece, defering execution of the query to when you actually use the would-be-returned data.
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You're absolutely right, that was my context. So yes, it would be great to have a structured way of managing data sources that don't live in a relational database. Advantage: LINQ.
How about working with a database, though - any advantages there? That's the part I'm just not seeing.
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On heavily loaded client/server applications, stored procedures can cause major bottlenecks. I was on the fringe of at least two projects where anything more than simple stored procedures were prohibited for this reason (and they had tests to prove it.)
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While I don't doubt what you're saying, the logic escapes me. Either way, you have to hit the database and fetch the data.
What's special about a stored procedure that would make it more of a performance bottleneck than retrieving the same data from the code? Seems like the db is serving up the same amount of bytes either way.
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Because stored procedures take computing time and aren't always trivial. Stored procedures aren't just a few lines of code to do, say, a select or simple update trigger, they can be entire programs which may have little to do with setting/retrieving data, but in manipulating that data. So, who should manipulate the date, the client or the server? (The answer is, of course, it depends.)
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Well, if you're writing entire programs, yeah, I get that. If I want procedural code, I want a procedural language.
But it still sounds to me like if you're just running queries to fetch data or do crud stuff, there's no benefit whatsoever to moving it into the application code. I get the impression people were hot to move that sort of thing to LINQ only because it was new and shiny.
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Christopher Duncan wrote: I get the impression people were hot to move that sort of thing to LINQ only because it was new and shiny.
My impression as well since the alternative to stored procedures is just writing normal queries. A few months ago, I used a tool that refactored some code into LINQ. The end result was only slightly shorter and much more difficult to understand than the original code. Plus, the LINQ code sucked in several more assemblies. I backed out the change.
(My impression is that most things in software development are about being "new and shiny", which is a major headache when you have to maintain the code for someone who constantly got suckered by this.)
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Given that you've been in the game for a long time, I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who sees this as more resume enhancement / religion than a functional improvement in development.
By the way, just popped over to look at your profile. Do you still fool around with film stuff?
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Christopher Duncan wrote: Do you still fool around with film stuff?
Not much since the 1990s, when I created several interactive videos for edutainment products (and wrote the software.) Lost money, but had a blast. Since then, my biggest project was editing my daughter's wedding video (I should have done a divorce video to bookend that....) I may get back into it one of these days.
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A daughter's wedding is a project in and of itself. I figure the insanity of a major and largely unrehearsed production put on by amateurs is that if you still want to be married by the time it's all done, you should get married. Apparently from your comment that comes with some caveats.
I'm enjoying the video stuff I've been playing with, but monetizing film, or video of any sort for that matter, is about as easy as winning the lottery. I'll do more to support my own creative work as it's just another medium in which to communicate, but it would be nice if there were a way to make a buck at it in the process.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: My impression is that most things in software development are about being "new and shiny"
The band wagon that you see in the distance always looks more shiny than the one that you are on. And since you are not on it and even once you get on, you will have no idea how often it breaks down or why.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: Because stored procedures take computing time and aren't always trivial
Versus for example dragging the entire database across the network, doing calculations on a single client box and then sending the entire database back? (And just to be clear that isn't hyperbole - I actually encountered a system that did that and it would only use one client machine.)
Joe Woodbury wrote: The answer is, of course, it depends
Exactly. Which is far different than claiming that stored procs are always bottlenecks.
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jschell wrote: Exactly. Which is far different than claiming that stored procs are always bottlenecks.
This pisses me off. I NEVER said that stored procedures are always bottlenecks. I said they CAN be bottlenecks and they can be. (Can is a conditional. Unfortunately, this isn't the first time you've distorted what was written, creating a straw man and then attacked the writer. It's getting tiresome. Please learn to read before replying.)
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Joe Woodbury wrote: I NEVER said that stored procedures are always bottlenecks
You certainly did imply that when you also said "where anything more than simple stored procedures were prohibited for this reason ".
You did not qualify that statement nor did you qualify your following statement about the tests used to prove this with the original comment. Your follow on post, and not this one, qualified that you were talking about a specific case with a business model unlikely to ever be applicable to most businesses.
Joe Woodbury wrote: Please learn to read before replying
You said "where anything more than simple stored procedures were prohibited for this reason".
Did you meant that in fact that complex ones were allowed when you said "prohibited"? Did you have some qualification for "simple" which suggested that only really, really complex ones where prohibited or, as I took it, did you mean anything more basic than CRUD?
When you said that there were tests that proved your assertions did you qualify that with the specific business case where it applied? Because I didn't see that when I "read" it. (Nor in this reply either.)
There is of course a difference between qualified and unqualified statements as well as a difference between what one meant and what one wrote.
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jschell wrote: You certainly did imply that when you also said "where anything more than simple stored procedures were prohibited for this reason ".
Here is my comment:
"On heavily loaded client/server applications, stored procedures can cause major bottlenecks. I was on the fringe of at least two projects where anything more than simple stored procedures were prohibited for this reason (and they had tests to prove it.)"
Note "heavily loaded" and can. In the second sentence, the phrase "for this reason" builds on the conditionality of the first sentence. This is all a single paragraph, where one sentence builds on the other.
What you are going, by contrast, is taking my words out of context. You then argue by setting up straw men and knocking them down and finally you blame me for making sure you understand what I wrote. You are a fool.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: stored procedures can cause major bottlenecks
You are claiming that for every single bit of SQL that implementing that in the application is going to be significantly faster?
And no one has actually discovered that until now?
Not to mention of course that requirements, architecture and design have far more impact on systems in terms of performance. A poor data model can completely destroy a system regardless of how it is implemented.
Joe Woodbury wrote: and they had tests to prove it
I am guessing they had "benchmarks" to "prove" it.
I suspect that for most of the major technologies that I am familiar with that I can come up with a benchmark in technology X that proves it is better than technology Y. Naturally I will be able to reverse X and Y.
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You do you understand the meaning of the word "can" right? You are arguing assertions I never made nor even discussed.
To turn this around, are you honestly asserting that stored procedures have zero CPU cost? Moreover, have you seen what some developers put in stored procedures?
jschell wrote:
I am guessing they had "benchmarks" to "prove" it.
No, actual tests with actual databases with terabytes of data which could get under extremely heavy loads due to tens of thousands of clients. Offloading some of the processing to clients helped immensely.
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Joe Woodbury wrote: You do you understand the meaning of the word "can" right?
However you also said "anything more than simple stored procedures were prohibited for this reason"
Joe Woodbury wrote: To turn this around, are you honestly asserting that stored procedures have zero
CPU cost?
Nope. But there is a big leap from there to banning everything.
Joe Woodbury wrote: Moreover, have you seen what some developers put in stored procedures?
And that has what to do with anything? I have seen a C++ class with 200,000 lines of code. I have seen an application that dragged the ENTIRE database across the network, computed on it, and then sent it back and that specific design was a bottleneck. I have seen a VP lock up a entire database and idle 200 call center employees on a weekly basis because he insisted on having direct access to the production database.
All of those however are PROCESS PROBLEMS. They have nothing to do with technology.
Joe Woodbury wrote: actual tests with actual databases with terabytes of data which could get under
extremely heavy loads due to tens of thousands of clients
Which seems like something that qualify the initial post with would have made it much clearer. Most businesses will never see anything like that however.
Joe Woodbury wrote: Offloading some of the processing to clients helped immensely.
One might suppose however that other businesses have other business needs and thus restrictions to one business environment should not be blindly applied to all industries and all businesses.
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jschell wrote: However you also said "anything more than simple stored procedures were prohibited for this reason"
Do you understand the concept of an illustration to make a point? To anyone with the slightest literacy, this was clearly an illustration of why stored procedures CAN be bad. Now, I could understand you misreading one comment, but you continue to argue against assertions I never made and even make statements that support what I wrote, but in condescending way. Despite all this, you never refuted my actual points. Based on this and previous posts by you, I can't help but wonder if you are being intentionally antagonistic and argumentative.
I don't know how old you are or how experienced in the field of computer science, but you come off as very arrogant and immature. When your errors are pointed out, you become combative and change your arguments as well as turning them back on the original poster as though it was all their fault. This borders on narcissism and makes dealing with you very unpleasant.
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