Yeah considering that: (list of complaints)

It’s really not that hard. I can do it in under 30 seconds from memory because I am a data dude. If you’re not, that’s no big deal; just find one who can help you with it. Projects don’t have to be a single person; they can be composed of multiple individuals, each with different specialties. If you want to work alone, learn all the specialties so you can do it, too, instead of whining about how hard it is.

You are asking backend devs that are specialized in (BE language that isn’t SQL) to maintain documentation on SQL code. (plus more complaints)

I’m not asking anyone to do anything. I’m saying that if there was good documentation, we’d all have an easier time. You can’t deny that. Is it gonna be easy to create and maintain all that documentation? Not necessarily. Will it make our lives easier down the road if we do, though? Yeah, probably.

And by the way, as a SQL Dev, I create documentation on my SQL deployments. I don’t expect the BEs to do it because, as you stated, they don’t know it as well as I do. I created it for them so they can have an understanding of the working parts they don’t know like the back of their hand, and I create it for me so I can explain it later because I don’t have every line of code I’ve ever written memorized and I might not be the next one who needs to work on it.

Doesn’t matter, because you know how I do it with my ORM?

I’ll admit I haven’t used a lot of ORMs because I’m old-school. If it has all the functionality you describe, that’s great! My point was that you were quick to disparage the SQL development process and it’s nuances. Not to mention the fact that the data design is, itself, often nuanced and detailed beyond just want a look-up tool can tell you. Data experts like myself exist so we can explain what’s going on, not just pain a picture of it. You can see what picture the puzzle makes, but you need someone who knows how all the pieces go together, don’t you?

If you have BE code that calls a stored proc that calls a stored proc that calls a stored proc that runs against a view of a view of a table (I’ve seen this sort of shit on very old long maintained large codebases a few times) it can take you hours just to work out the exact chain of what calls what to figure out how a table got to be a specific way at some point.

You’re absolutely right. This is bad design. It should not be done this way. However, if you have an intelligent and creative Data Expert, you’ll get an easily designed solution that you can use over and over and requires minimal effort to maintain and update as the needs change. It comes down to who built it and what skills they had. Categorically believing that all data delivery solutions are terrible because of this one kind of experience is a logical fallacy.

No. Thanks.

Look, that’s fine. If you don’t wanna touch it, don’t touch it. Let data experts touch it. I’ve designed database systems for IBM, Nike, and Amazon AWS, and I was singularly capable of doing so because of my background. None of the other hundreds of developers on the dozens of Agile teams were able to do that work because they all had other specialties and other jobs and just needed data to be delivered to them quickly, efficiently, and in a manner that was easy to digest and utilize. That was my job as the Data Expert. If you don’t have one but you need one, you need to become one. And if you were one, you wouldn’t be disparaging the trade so much.