Eak wrote: "Do you just squirrel away SQL throughout your code?"

Depends on the scale of the project.

On large projects, there are some good arguments for hiding (encapsulating) all of the nitty gritty SQL behind stored procedures inside the database. That way, should the backend database change, all well-behaved front-end apps that read and write data through the stored procedures wont break.

On medium-size projects, I hide (encapsulate) the SQL inside purposeful functions (eg insert_new_customer( ... ), get_all_customers( ... )) and share these functions across the project by putting them in a module.