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
