Advanced Oracle PL/SQL Programming with Packages

3.13. Glancing Backward, Looking Upward

Now that was a journey through the valleys and peaks of modularization! I started with a simple solution to what seemed to be a very simple request. I ended up with a very generic, well-structured function that handles the simple request and many others as well.

Along the way, I applied many best practices of recommendations for module construction (some of which are covered in Chapter 2, some of which are discussed in Oracle PL/SQL Programming). With each successive change to twice (and then repeated), I took another turn up along the spiral that represents the rise in quality of my PL/SQL coding techniques. At the end, I had a polished function with proven performance and wide applicability. Take a look at the final version of my repeater function (the dup package). Could you have ever predicted that endpoint from the first version of the twice function? I certainly could not have. In fact, when I started this chapter, the repeated function looked quite different from the way it does now. I found many improvements to make from my first progression of twice (a thorough improvisation performed "live" during a class in Tulsa, Oklahoma) as I "rationalized" the code into an chapter.

And so we come face to face with one of the most extraordinary characteristics of the programming spiral. It's not like a Slinky. That toy has the right shape, but it also has a beginning and an end. The spiral for developers has a beginning (though you would probably ...