28 December 2007 - 21:09PL-SQL vs Java - speed vs ease of development

You know the old debate between PL-SQL developers and Java developers: “Your Java app will never run as fast as my PL-SQL programs”, “you will never be able to pass a message to an external system and update a DB row at the same time”.

Well, the 2 camps are both right, PL-SQL is very good at performance, while Java is very good at modeling an application. We should use each platform’s strengths. So what would follow from this approach? Well, I think it is pretty obvious: create small PL-SQL procedures focused very well on their target and orchestrate them in Java. Avoid creating big PL-SQL procedures because one side effect of this approach would be creating high complexity in a language and a platform that doesn`t deal with complexity so well. Calling these small PL-SQL procedures amd assembling them into larger blocks from Java code is basically orchestrating them from a platform that handles complexity pretty well.

Do this and you will have a Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!