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copied!<p>First, stop trying to think of databases in object oriented terms. Principles of object oriented programming simply do NOT apply to relational databases. </p> <p>Shared databases are a very good thing from a business perspective. Multiple databases storing information that has to be transferred between them quickly becomes way more complex than your piddly many hundreds of objects. Data that is consistent between enterprise applications is priceless. Trying to reconcile if GE Corp and General Electric Corporation are really the same entity between two databases can be a nightmare.</p> <p>Refactoring datbases is a nice goal, but it is very complex in reality. Don't do it unless you have a major performance issue that needs to be addressed or unless you are willing to commit to a process of identifying all the code that might be affected by a change. Even then, consider if you can know all the code that might change (this is one reason why database people hate, hate, hate dynamic code!). </p> <p>Often the best way to refactor is to add your change and start changing over to using your new field, sp etc while leaving the old one in place until a set expiration date. Since you are on an annual cycle, you will need to manage those dates over a long period of time. To see if sps are being used, you can identify the ones you aren't sure of and add some code to them to insert to a table everytime they are run. If after your whole year cycle, they haven't been run, you can safely eliminate them. The cycle may be shorter depending on the sp. </p> <p>If I'm writing something that will only be run annually, I would normally put the word annual in the sp name. But that may not be true where you are, however, the function of the sp should give you an idea if it is something that should only be run periodically. I wouldn't expect usp_send email proc to only run once a year but I might expect that a usp_attendance_report might not be run often. Of course as I said, I would have named it something more like usp_annual_attendance_report and you can consider doing that sort of thing moving forward. </p> <p>But be aware that any refactoring you do will have to take place on a long cycle to ensure that you don't delete something you need. If your code is in a source control system (and all database tables, sp, views, UDFs, triggers, etc should be), you can probably eliminate some things knowing that if they fail you can pretty instantly put them back. Again, I'd examine the object to determine the possible risk eliminating them would have.</p> <p>Of course if you have good automated tests in place, eliminating something on dev and running the tests can help you find out if something is still being referenced.</p> <p>If you are looking for an easy way to refactor, I don't know of one. Refactoring databses is a time-consuming, risky activity and one which may not show enough improvement for the powers that be to be willing to pay for it.</p> <p>A good book on refactoring databases is:<a href="http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0321293533" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.amazon.com/Refactoring-Databases-Evolutionary-Addison-Wesley-Signature/dp/0321293533</a></p>

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