Pros and cons of using packages in Oracle

Question

I am fairly new to using packages. My team is deciding on whether or not to use packages in our applications. We have 4 applications that are using in-line sql currently. We are

Answer 1

If you're going to have different applications accessing the same tables, with the same business logic happening on the database (eg. constraints, etc), then stored procs are the way to go. Think of them as the interface between the "front end" (ie. anything that's not the database) and the database, in much the same way as a webservice provides an interface to the mid-tier (I think; I'm really not up on the non-db related architecture!).

Your publically callable stored procedures would be typically things like create_a_new_customer, add_a_new_address, retrieve_customer_details, etc, where the logic behind each action is coded and related procedures would be grouped into the same package. You wouldn't want to code a series of procedures that just do dml on the tables and expect the applications to work out when to call each procedure.