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Stored procedures, business logic and certifications

I was getting into it on another site with this guy who insists that you should apply business rules to data in stored procedures, going as far as to quote something either on MSDN or in a certification training book. I disagreed with him but he was sure he was right.

I brought up an example relevant to my current project where we're migrating to .NET from an old COBOL system. The datastore will be last to change from the mainframe to SQL Server. If we applied our rules on the mainframe we'd have to rewrite that code when we went to SQL Server, and that's not something we want to do. This didn't click with him.

I'll be the first to admit that the academic teaching of n-tier architecture is somewhat out of control and frequently ignores the practical aspect of a project or application. However, with service oriented architectures being all the rage in gigantic systems that combine all kinds of different technologies, I generally feel that the less you tie together the better. That's why I get all excited about ObjectSpaces. At the end of the day, I still don't want my datastore applying business rules.

The guy I was arguing with has only college experience, and is no pursuing a PhD. That's a fine and noble thing to do (my wife has two masters degrees). When he started pulling out stuff from certification texts, that's when I thought back to a recent post from someone about the relative quality and use of a certification.

In the OS/networking space, certifications are a dime a dozen, and as many hiring managers will tell you, they mean a lot less than being able to demonstrate the ability to solve problems. I don't know if this is true for programming folks, but would you hire someone with an MSCD issued last month or someone who has been using .NET since it was beta? I think the choice is obvious.

10 Comments

  • I had this same conversation in comments. Someone told me it would be better to do all business logic within SQL stored procedures rather than in the BLL calling different stored procedures within a transaction. Sometimes I just wonder if these people have real programming experience in the enterprise world.

  • In general, I tend to see people go after certicications when they lack professional experience (but not always). Personally, I still go for professional experience when I am judging someone for a position.



    As for business logic in your data tier. no way....data is just that. Data. Your business logic layer is for business logic.



    -Mathew Nolton

  • Sometimes you can't go for experience. Do I want someone who has done nothing but VBScript for 7 years over someone who has been programming .NET for 2?



    It depends. I usually hire for motivation, teamwork ability, intelligence, and ethics. With those skills, the employees can learn anything they need to.

  • Oh, and certification is a sign of motivation.

  • That's where I disagree. Maybe I'm just too fiercely independent (or too much of a hard-ass for my own good), but I look at it as buying into Microsoft marketing. :)

  • I am that guy you are referring to :)



    I did insist that what I said wasn't necessarily best practise in the "real world", and that I did have no experience in the enterprise market...after all, I'm only 23 and I decided to get academic experience before I entered the workplace.



    People can only go on what I have experienced. Pratical real life experience takes time, and yes, it is vital IMHO. I just haven't the experience yet, but education helps you prepare and learn how to adapt to new technology and new ideas, as well as learning how to research (in the case of a PhD).



    Certification is education, and certainly achieving a certificate shows the key skills of learning, digesting, and being motivated to pass the course. Financial considerations aside, it can only improve one's own ability and interest. I can't see the real problem.

  • And, if you read the thread, you'd see I *did* accept those points you raised. And I *wasn't* sure I was right. That is misrepresenting what the situation was. I was asking why I was wrong, not enforcing I was right.



    Being constructive is far better than being overtly critical...

  • You assume that the story is about you and that Sitepoint is the only place on the planet that I post.

  • Call it deductive reasoning ;)

  • I would to agree with Philip ;o)

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