Professional SQL Server™ 2005 Programming

14.10. Summary

Well, if you aren't thinking to yourself something along the lines of "Wow, that's powerful," then I can only guess you somehow skipped straight to the summary without reading the rest of the chapter. That's what this chapter is all about — giving you the power to do very complex things (or, in a few cases, simple things that still weren't possible before). What this chapter was also about, in a very subtle way, was a mechanism that can break your system very quickly. Yeah, yeah, yeah — I know I'm resorting to scare tactics, but I make no apologies for it. When using assemblies, you need to be careful. Think about what you're doing, and analyze each of the steps that your assembly is going to be taking even more thoroughly than you already do. Consider latency you're going to be adding if you create long-running processes. Consider external dependencies you are creating if you make external calls — how reliable are those external processes? You need to know, as your system is now only as reliable as the external systems you're calling.

Now, having hopefully scared you into caution about assemblies, let me ease up a bit and say don't avoid them solely out of fear. Assemblies were added for a reason, and they give us a power we both need and can use (not to mention that they are just plain cool). As always, think about what you need, and don't make your solution any more complex than it needs to be. Keep in mind, however, that what seems at first to be the more complex ...