Haha, as much as I'd wish I could explain less at my current employer, it's usually not possible to do so :hehe:. The main database system here used to be Access, before I migrated the system to SQL Server at their request. It was commonplace for the users to write their own Access queries for various tasks, some of which needed a lot of cleaning up and remodeling to avoid issues (unrestricted UPDATEs, ack!). As a result, management believes that they're just as much into the technical field as I am, which is... Mildly untrue at times, to put it one way.

I remember when I had to program in a means of calculating whether packages would fit into shipping boxes, to replace an old system for doing the same thing that was inaccurate and sometimes unable to properly match items to boxes. Thanks to some awesome help from these forums, I got a routine procedure established that would accurately take our products and match them to boxes, as long as it was supplied with updated information whenever we got new boxes.

Management inquired about how the procedure worked, and I just explained, "It'll look at the information on all the boxes we have, make comparisons with our products, find the best fit, and store the fit in a table for review as needed." Management wanted a better explanation, and I told them that calculatiions are made with the product data in the database. They wanted to know where the calculations were; naturally, the calculations were in a query in the procedure. They looked horrified. The boss proclaimed that I'd created a coding monster, and this would lead to nothing but trouble. I was puzzled.

Apparently, they felt that the calculation formulas themselves should be stored somewhere in the database, too, so they could check the formulas in case they ever needed to know why something went in a certain box. If they didn't know the query formula, how could they ever know it was right? Besides trying to put the item in the box, anyhow? 😛

Ironically, the old method of doing this was essentially the exact same procedure, except it didn't do a data-based rotation of the items to see if they'd fit another way, and it had to be run by hand. Seemingly, that procedure was never examined by management, and they never had complaints about it until it started causing problems with us paying too much shipping. Either way, at least things are functioning far better now, even if I'm slightly worried about having to explain my coding when it's mostly unnecessary again :hehe: