Is speed really your most important consideration?

Yes, performance is clearly one of them. That's why I benchmark my code, instead of relying on FUD.

In fact, it is my considered opinion that stored procedures are a maintainability nightmare and should be avoided at pretty much all costs.

Your nightmares are different from mine then. Orthogonally different actually. I keep having this horrible nightmare where this big, "flexible", "write-once, run (poorly) everywhere" application full of embedded sql comes to get me.

You end up with the next developer who has to touch that bit of code spending three days figuring out how it works first, instead of three minutes.

Yes, but only if you assume (s)he has not previous knowledge of the technology in question (i.e. PL/SQL, the Oracle database). In my opinion, that makes her/him unqualified for the role as developer for that platform. Besides, those three days spent learning a new technology could be the best investment that person made in a long time.

Andreas
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