>I think SP has an important role in many instances, especially for rapid-fire append scenarios or where many apps in different languages all need the same data access, which is an excellent point raised by JVP last week when he described writing an ASP.NET wrapper over the top of existing SP.

Yes, I agree.

>But if you are writing for multiple backends, the opposite may well apply.

Well, I don't know. I still think SPs make things easier. The SPs for the various backends would return essentially the same data ... so the rest of your application doesn't really need to know anything about how that data is retrieved.

>Worth noting that databases like mySQL (most popular open source database) didn't have SP at all until late last year, yet formed the basis for lots of quality C/S work.<

I'm sure. I wasn't saying that you couldn't have a quality C/S application if you didn't use SPs, I was just saying that SPs should be considered first, prior to any other methodology.

Good discussion ...

~~Bonnie