So yesterday a debate surfaced that seemed to have the entire online programming community all worked up. Rob Howard, Microsoft ASP.NET Program Manager, posted to his blog about using stored procedures in SQL server. Many comments both for and against Rob's arguments in his post ensued. Things got a little heated when Frans Bouma stepped into the debate. Frans took his ideas to his own blog, and then you see the entire blogging community step in (via their own respective blogs) to add their own take on things. What a day.

Here's a break down of some of the more notable posts on both sides of the debate:

Rob Howard's original post (debate started in the post's comments):
http://weblogs.asp.net/rhoward/posts/38095.aspx

Frans Bouma's counter:
http://weblogs.asp.net/fbouma/posts/38178.aspx

Rob addresses Frans' arguments:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rhoward/posts/38446.aspx

and then goes on some more:
http://weblogs.asp.net/rhoward/posts/38298.aspx

The debate goes beyond just these posts from Rob and Frans. Doing some googles with lead you to many other places the debate surfaced. Although Frans does make some good arguments, I find that I side with Rob. I've always been deep in the stored proc camp. I love them. My arguments for why I like and use them is similar to what Donny Mack had to say about them (Edit: looks like that was actually Joseph Cooney). I use stored procs as an part of my data layer. Just as you might add methods to a class in the data layer, I have methods as procs. It gives me some abstraction from the database as I never again have to care where/how things go, I just pass them off. I develop for SQL server in almost every case. I'm not afraid of T-SQL. For me, stored procs are pure love. I can't imagine not using them.