Modular Database Structures

Posted by John D on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by John D
Published on 2012-07-01T16:38:33Z Indexed on 2012/07/01 21:24 UTC
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I have been examining the code base we use in work and I am worried about the size the packages have grown to. The actual code is modular, procedures have been broken down into small functional (and testable) parts. The issue I see is that we have 100 procedures in a single package - almost an entire domain model.

I had thought of breaking these packages down - to create sub domains that are centered around the procedure relationships to other objects. Group a bunch of procedures that have 80% of their relationships to three tables etc. The end result would be a lot more packages, but the packages would be smaller and I feel the entire code base would be more readable - when procedures cross between two domain models it is less of a struggle to figure which package it belongs to.

The problem I now have is what the actual benefit of all this would really be. I looked at the general advantages of modularity:

1. Re-usability
2. Asynchronous Development 
3. Maintainability

Yet when I consider our latest development, the procedures within the packages are already reusable. At this advanced stage we rarely require asynchronous development - and when it is required we simply ladder the stories across iterations.

So I guess my question is if people know of reasons why you would break down classes rather than just the methods inside of classes? Right now I do believe there is an issue with these mega packages forming but the only benefit I can really pin down to break them down is readability - something that experience gained from working with them would solve.

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