>but can someone explain to me why we would want to store functions in a database? Because that is where they belong. A database is not a storage device, it i

>but can someone explain to me why we would want to store functions in a database? Because that is where they belong. A database is not a storage device, it is a application development environment. Everything about your data should be in your database, including the rules, restrictions, relationships, and ways of manipulating it. In this case, trying to do it in a layer above the database would mean either doing it horribly inefficiently by copying too much data to the app server and then grouping it, or embedding the SQL into your app which means you need to go and find it and copy+paste it when you want to do that manually at any time for testing/debugging/etc. Plus, when you end up with multiple applications using a database, do you really want to be keeping multiple copies of the same code in sync across multiple apps for no reason?