.. spending three days (well, three shifts) figuring out how on earth this set of inter-related stored procedures work. And he's still not confident changing them that he won't break anything.

That sounds more like bad use of technology than bad technology itself.

SQL is designed for getting information from the database and putting information into the database.

Yes. But we're also discussing PL/SQL, which was designed to do a whole lot more than data retrieval.

Use the right tool for the job.

Exactly. And apparently when using Oracle, that will often involve PL/SQL.

Andreas
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