Ask HN: Business Logic in the Database?

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Ask HN: Business Logic in the Database?

War story time: I once worked on a system where almost the entirety of the business logic was inside SQL stored procs. I think there were over 6000 of them, all tightly coupled, procs calling procs that call back to the original proc. Terrible performance, constant deadlocks, nobody understood how it worked and mostly everyone was too scared to touch it. So of course they ended up building even more procs around the ones that were there.

I kind of assumed it was a unique 'perfect storm' of mistakes and nobody else in the world could possibly have done the same, but I've heard from one or two other devs recently that they've seen similar and now I'm wondering if this is far more common than I'd imagined.

I feel like I'm a builder asking, "hey guys, did any of you ever work on a house where the roof was on the bottom?"

Discussion 3 comments · 3 points · boxesnlines · 9d
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